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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.

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