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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

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http://g.msn.com/0US!s9.31612_317615/6.c589/2??cm=APworldnews

 

Car bomb explodes outside U.S. base, at least 16 people reported killed

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 23 - A suicide car bomber set off an explosion Saturday 
at a police station near a U.S. Marine base in western Iraq, killing at least 
16 policemen and wounding 40 other people, officials said.

 

     The explosion occurred at about <>7 a.m. outside the gates of Marine 
Camp Al Asad in Baghdadi, about 140 miles west of Baghdad near Ramadi, U.S. 
and Iraqi officials said. 
       No American soldiers were hurt in the attack, the U.S. military said. 
Some of the wounded were being treated at a U.S. military medical facility, 
while others were flown to civilian hospitals, a spokesman said. 
       The blast came hours after the U.S. military arrested an aide to 
Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and five others during raids 
on a safe house in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, officials said. The 
aide had risen to prominence in recent weeks as other al-Zarqawi staff had 
been killed, according to intelligence sources. 
       The 1:30 a.m. raid in southern Fallujah targeted a site being used as 
a safe haven by al-Zarqawi's inner circle, according to a military statement. 
       Fallujah residents said the raid occurred at the home of Abdel-Hamid 
Fiyadh, 50, who was arrested along with his two sons, Walid, 18, and Majid, 
25, and three relatives. Relatives insisted the men had nothing to do with 
al-Zarqawi, who has a $25 million bounty on his head from the United States. 
       American forces have stepped up operations in Fallujah in a bid to 
root out al-Zarqawi's terror group, Tawhid and Jihad, which is believed to 
operate from there. The group has been blamed in numerous suicide bombings - 
including recent twin blasts inside Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses the 
U.S and Iraqi leadership - and beheadings of foreign hostages. 
       Among the most shocking of the kidnappings was that of Margaret 
Hassan, an aid worker with joint British, Irish and Iraqi citizenship who has 
spent nearly half her life delivering food and medicine in Iraq. Hassan, who 
is married to an Iraqi, was seized Tuesday in western Baghdad as she rode to 
work in her car. 
       On Friday, Hassan appeared in a wrenching televised statement begging 
for her life and urging British Prime Minister Tony Blair to withdraw his 
country's troops from Iraq. 
       The gaunt, 59-year-old woman's statement puts new political pressure 
on Blair's government shortly after it agreed to a U.S. request to transfer 
850 British soldiers from southern Iraq to the Baghdad area to free American 
forces for new offensives against insurgents. 
       ''Please help me, please help me,'' Hassan, who heads CARE 
International's operations in Iraq, said in a grainy videotape broadcast by 
Al-Jazeera television. ''This might be my last hours. Please help me. Please, 
the British people, ask Mr. Blair to take the troops out of Iraq, and not to 
bring them here to Baghdad.'' 
       British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the video ''extremely 
distressing.'' 
       Unlike most previous hostage tapes, this one featured no hooded 
gunmen, no banners identifying the militant group and no explicit demands for 
the captive's freedom. Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based station, said it received 
the tape Friday but did not say where or how. 
       On Saturday, CARE International secretary-general Denis Caillaux made 
an appeal on al-Jazeera to Hassan's kidnappers to release her. 
       ''She is a naturalized Iraqi citizen and always holds the people of 
Iraq in her heart. CARE joins with many of the people whose lives Mrs. Hassan 
has touched over her decades of service in Iraq in reaching out to her 
captors to appeal to their humanity,'' he said. 
       The British and Irish governments called for her immediate release. 
       ''Taking Margaret from her family is a cruel and shocking act,'' Irish 
premier Bertie Ahern said in Dublin. ''To harm her in any way would be 
unthinkable. I call on her captors, on behalf of the government and people of 
Ireland, to release her immediately.'' 
       Militants have kidnapped at least seven other foreign women over the 
past six months, and all were released. In September, Italian aid workers 
Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, were kidnapped from their Baghdad 
offices. They were freed three weeks later. 
       By contrast, at least 33 foreign male hostages have been killed, 
including three Americans beheaded by their captors. Insurgents, 
nevertheless, have targeted Iraqi women working for the Americans or their 
allies, including Thursday's deadly ambush on a bus carrying female airline 
employees on their way to work at Baghdad airport. 
       Hassan has done aid work in this country for nearly 30 years. She 
joined CARE soon after it began operations in Iraq in 1991, managing a staff 
of 60 Iraqis who run nutrition, health and water programs throughout the 
country. 
       In other developments Saturday: 
       - A roadside bomb detonated near a U.S. military patrol along the 
highway leading to the Baghdad airport, wounding six soldiers, the U.S. 
military said. None of the wounds were life-threatening. 
       - A mortar round landed in a central Baghdad neighborhood, killing two 
people and injuring one. 
       - A suicide driver detonated a car bomb near an Iraqi National Guard 
checkpoint south of Samarra, killing four guardsmen and injuring six, police 
said. 
       - An unexploded mortar was found inside Japan's military base in 
Samawah, southern Iraq, the first since hundreds of Japanese troops arrived 
on a humanitarian mission, a Japanese official said. There were no injuries. 
       - Gunmen opened fire on a convoy of Turkish trucks in Mosul, killing 
two drivers - a Turk and a Yugoslav - and wounding two others, hospital and 
police officials said. The attack occurred about noon in the center of the 
city. 



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