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Rising violence in Iraq as bomber kills dozens By Alissa J. Rubin Tuesday, March 10, 2009 BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber took aim at a group of Iraqi Army officers on their way to a reconciliation conference, killing 33 people Tuesday and raising concerns about an increase in insurgent activity in Iraq. It was the second attack since Sunday to kill more than two dozen people. An eyewitness said the Tuesday attack was carried out by a person wearing a national police uniform who struck a group of officials in a marketplace near the municipal building in Abu Ghraib, on the western outskirts of the capital. The Iraqi Interior Ministry put the death toll at 33, with 46 injured. Two days earlier, on Sunday, a suicide bomber killed 28 people in Baghdad. The bombings suggest a renewed ability by insurgents to mount more effective suicide bombings, after a long period in which such attacks were relatively few and less lethal because of heavy security precautions. The incident Tuesday occurred in the early afternoon as the local Iraqi Army leaders were on their way to a scheduled reconciliation conference in the District Council with Sunni tribal leaders in the area, according to army officers at the scene. After the bombing, as people gathered to help the injured, groups of armed men opened fire, killing some of those who survived the bombing, according to Mujasha al-Tamini, the chief editor of Al Iraqiya, a satellite television network that had two reporters at the scene. A correspondent and a photographer for another Iraqi television network, Al Baghdadiya, were killed in the attack. The Iraqi Army lost at least seven men, including the commander of the third regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Muhammed Jassim. The commander of the Al Muthanna Brigade, Staff Colonel Murad Kareem, was injured, and his brother, who was his bodyguard, was killed, military officials said. The two recent bombings, and one last week in Babil Province, have had sharply higher death tolls than most others in the past several months, suggesting that extremists have been able to figure out ways to penetrate the heavy security that now surrounds all public functions in Iraq. They also raised questions about whether the insurgency has reinvigorated its operations in Iraq after a long period of relative decline. Also on Tuesday, a suicide car bomber in the Hamdaniya district of Ninevah province east of Mosul attacked a police patrol, killing three people, including an Iraqi Army soldier who was standing near the explosion. The area is mainly Christian, but also is home to Kurds and to Arabs displaced from Mosul.
