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Eight killed in fresh Iraq violence

BAGHDAD: A bomb exploded in an outdoor market in a city south of Baghdad on Monday, killing four Iraqi civilians and wounding two, police said.

In the capital, the bullet-ridden, handcuffed and blindfolded bodies of three Iraqi men were found, a drive-by shooting killed a Shia grocer in his shop, and three roadside bombs exploded, one of them wounding two Iraqis, said police.

Meanwhile, about 200 Shias rallied outside the Green Zone in Baghdad to demand that US and Iraqi forces do more to stop insurgent attacks and help Iraqis who have fled their homes because of sectarian violence.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have left mixed Sunni-Shiite areas because of such killings, some carried out by militias allied with Iraqi political parties. A surge in such attacks began after the Feb 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in northern Iraq.

The outdoor vegetable market where the bomb exploded on Monday is located in Madain, a mostly Shiite city about 20 kilometres southeast of Baghdad. Last month, six insurgents were killed there when a homemade bomb they were building exploded inside a house.

Government offices were closed across Iraq on Monday because of Workers’ Day, a national holiday, but many businesses and stores remained open.

The capital’s first roadside bomb exploded at 8am in the Mashtal district of eastern Baghdad, wounding two Iraqi civilians, said police Maj. Mahir Musa.

The second blast, targeting an Iraqi police convoy, occurred at 9.45am on a highway in the nearby district of Kamsara, causing no casualties, said police Lt. Bilal Ali Majid.

About five minutes later, a fuel can being used as a roadside bomb exploded about 500 meters behind a US military convoy in Al Bayaa, a neighbourhood of southern Baghdad, causing no injuries or damage, the US military said.

Most of the 200 Shias who demonstrated outside the tall cement wall surrounding the Green Zone on Monday were Shiites dressed in abaya, the full-length black robes worn by devout Muslim women. One weeping demonstrator held up the photo ID card of her husband, a truck driver, and said he recently had been killed in a drive-by shooting. Other protesters waved large cloth banners with slogans demanding that the Iraqi government provide better care for displaced families.

At one point, two Iraqi men _ a soldier and a civilian _ left the Green Zone, where Iraq’s government meets and the U.S. Embassy is located, to meet with the protesters and briefly take notes about who they were and what they were demanding.

In other violence Monday insurgents fired two mortar shells at a US military base in Haqlaniyah, 220 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, prompting soldiers to search surrounding houses and shops for suspected militants, witnesses said. No casualties were reported. In Tikrit, the hometown of former Prime Minister Saddam Hussein, roadside bombs aimed at American convoys exploded in two nearby neighborhoods, police said. No casualties were reported, but US and Iraqi forces to searched homes in both areas.

US President George W Bush said on Monday that the war-torn country had finally turned a corner in establishing security and democracy. But Bush also conceded that there would still be “tough days ahead” in Iraq. agencies

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