Updated at 8:16 p.m. EDT, Oct. 16, 2009
Although few attacks were reported this prayer day, a significant bombing in Tal Afar shot the casualty toll over a hundred. At least 18 Iraqis were killed and 97 were wounded there and in attacks in nearby Mosul. Meanwhile, Sadrists held a primary election to choose candidates for January’s national elections. Also, a former U.S. contractor plead guilty to abusive sexual contact after being accused of jumping and fondling a woman at an airbase in Iraq.
Fifteen people were killed and 95 more were wounded in an attack on a Sunni mosque in Tal Afar. A suicide bomber stood up as the mosque’s imam began a sermon. The bomber fired on the worshippers with an AK-47. When the gun ran out of ammunition, he detonated an explosives belt. The imam, Abdul-Satar Hassan, was among the dead. Yesterday, a senior al-Qaeda leader was detained in Mosul and brought back to Tal Afar, but no connection to today’s blast has as yet been made. Three other assassins may have escaped.
In Mosul, a suicide bomber killed an Iraqi soldier at a checkpoint. Yesterday, police shot at an ambulance, killing the patient and wounding two others including a paramedic.
No casualties were reported in a clash in Rabeaa between Iraqi security forces and sugar smugglers. The smugglers fled back into Syria.
A bridge connecting Ameriyat al-Falluja and Abu Ghraib was blown up.
The U.N. reported that 30,000 Iraqis in their resettlement program have moved to the U.S.
