In Baghdad, two car bombs exploded during morning rush hour Tuesday, killing as many as seven and wounding 19, including three American soldiers, officials said. One of the car bombs exploded in a business district of central Baghdad.
The explosion, which took place near a cinema, sent a huge plume of black smoke into the sky. A police officer with the Interior Ministry said that at least seven people were killed and 16 wounded by a suicide car bomb that exploded just as a U.S. military convoy of Humvees and armored vehicles was passing.
Firefighters and ambulances raced to the scene, where at least five heavily damaged vehicles were burning in al-Nasr Square, a main intersection of shops, offices and apartment buildings, The AP reportered.
Meanwhile, a Japanese worker, whom Iraqi gunmen claim to have kidnapped, was confirmed missing in Iraq, the British security firm he works for said Monday.
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed on a Web posting Monday that they had seized Japanese security contractor Akihio Saito, 44, after ambushing a convoy of foreigners and Iraq troops inwestern Iraq.
The London-based security company Hart said a number of the company's workers had been attacked in a remote area of Iraq Sunday.
In the meantime, American forces backed by helicopter gunships and warplanes swept through a large area of western Iraq near the Syrian border for a third day Tuesday, raiding desert outposts and safe houses belonging to "insurgents", the U.S. military said.
On Tuesday, fighting was reported in Obeidi, located 185 miles west of Baghdad, and the two nearby towns of Rommana and Karabilah.
On its part, The New York Times reported that Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighters dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs and fired 510 20-millimeter cannon rounds Sunday against activists around Qaim and that Marine F/A-18 fighters fired 319 20-millimeter cannon rounds.
The U.S. paper quoted U.S. Col. Bob Chase, chief of operations for the Second Marine Division, as saying, "The enemy honestly felt that they had a sense of security up there. It had been a safe haven, and a lot of folks up there were former Baathists."
"Now it is no longer a safe haven, and it will never be a safe haven again," said Chase. He was quoted as saying "insurgents" have had a network of illegal "rat lines" of men and materials moving from Syria into Iraq that had to be stopped, and said the offensive would continue for several days.
In a related development, gunmen kidnapped the governor of Iraq's western Anbar province Tuesday and told his family he would be freed when U.S. forces withdraw from Qaim, relatives said.
Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi, his brother, Hammad, told The Associated Press.
© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
