Roundup: Iraqi insurgents step up attacks amid harsh crackdown

Iraqi insurgents killed dozens of people on Saturday in a series of suicide bombing attacks across the country as US Marines launched a second large-scale operation near the Syrian border.

A suicide car bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol near the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in the flashpoint city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killing 14 soldiers and wounding eight others, witnesses and medical sources said on Saturday.

"We have received 14 bodies of Iraqi soldiers and eight others wounded, including four in critical condition, who were evacuated to Baghdad's hospitals," a medical source in Fallujah Hospital told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, a series of insurgent attacks in Baghdad killed at least four people, including two Iraqi soldiers and a 10-year-old girl.

A suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden vehicle into a crowd of Iraqi soldiers in west Baghdad, killing two soldiers and wounding six others.

Several miles away, a roadside bomb missed a passing American military convoy, but killed a 10-year-old Iraqi girl and injuring two others. No American casualty was reported in the attack.

On Saturday, US Marines launched a second large-scale operation in western Iraq, intensifying efforts to wipe out insurgents and foreign fighters in the Euphrates valley near the Syrian border.

Some 1,000 US Marines backed by helicopters launched Operation Dagger east of Tharthar lake, just one day after US and Iraqi troops began Operation Spear in Qaim town, also near the Syrian border.

"Approximately 50 insurgents have been killed since the operation began yesterday morning," a US military statement said.

No independent confirmation of the casualties was available yet.

US forces believe foreign fighters often infiltrate into Iraq through its porous border with Syria.

On Thursday, a US general called Syria's border the "worst problem" in terms of stemming the flow of foreign fighters.

The US military has no reports about civilian casualties as a result of the operation, the statement said.

However, medical sources in Qaim Hospital said, "We have received 12 bodies till Friday night and 15 wounded from Karabilah only."

Some of the victims were children, women and elderly residents, the medics told Xinhua, adding that five of the 12 bodies were members of one family.

The US troops carried out two major offensives in the area last month, killing 125 insurgents in the first offensive named Operation Matador, and killed 14 in the second offensive named Operation New Market.

Some 11 US Marines were killed in the two operations.

On Saturday, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari arrived in Kuwait City for a two-day official visit, the first by an elected Iraqi head of government.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari will hold talks with his Kuwaiti counterpart Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah to coordinate positions before an international conference on rebuilding Iraq in Brussels on June 22, Kuwaiti foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed Sabah Al- Salem Al-Sabah said.

According to the Kuwait News Agency, the minister expressed Kuwait's full support for Iraq, describing Jaafari's visit " historic" for both countries.

In Baghdad, Jawad Kadhim, a 37-year-old Iraqi correspondent working for Dubai-based al-Arabiyah TV, was seriously wounded in an apparently kidnapping attempt on Saturday.

Two gunmen approached Kadhim when he was leaving a restaurant in the Iraqi capital. But police at the scene opened fire at the gunmen, who shot back wounding Kadhim in his neck and jaw before fleeing the scene, the al-Arabiyah channel said.

It added that Kadhim was in a serious but stable condition.

Last year, eight employees working for the channel were killed, three by US forces and five by a car bombing at its office in Baghdad's Mansur district.

Source: Xinhua