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10 Shia pilgrims slain: 12 killed in Iraq blasts, shooting

* Insurgents say Japanese hostage killed
* Pakistani among 304 deported to Iran
* US Marine and Arab leader killed

BAGHDAD: Two suicide car bombers detonated their vehicles close to a base manned by US and Iraqi troops near the northern town of Sinjar close to the Syrian border, killing at least five Iraqis and wounding dozens, hospital officials said.

Guerrillas also ambushed a car carrying Iraqi soldiers near Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing four and seriously wounding another, local police said.

Insurgents have sharply raised the level of violence over the past month, including a wave of suicide bombings.

The attacks have killed nearly 700 Iraqis, and 68 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the same period – the worst monthly US death toll since January when more than 100 were killed in the run-up to the historic January 30 elections. Iraq’s government has vowed to crack down on insurgents and says it will flood Baghdad with 40,000 troops to seal off routes into the city, set up roadblocks and search the capital district by district for guerrillas and weapons.

They will be backed by the 10,000 US troops stationed in Baghdad, officials say. The offensive, named Operation Thunder, will be the largest Iraqi military operation since the fall of Saddam Hussein more than two years ago. Insurgents said on Saturday they had killed a Japanese hostage seized in Iraq and posted footage on the Internet apparently showing his bloodied corpse.

Japan’s foreign ministry confirmed that the video footage showed the body of Akihiko Saito, 44, a former paratrooper and veteran of the French Foreign Legion, who was captured on May 8 when insurgents ambushed a civilian security convoy. A roadside bomb blast targeting a US convoy in Mosul killed three Iraqi civilians, including a 10-year-old boy, and injured nine, said Dr. Saad Khalid from al-Jumhouri hospital.

In the Shia town of Diwaniya, residents said insurgents had killed 10 pilgrims returning from Syria. Sectarian tensions have been mounting in Iraq after a series of mass killings, with victims shot execution-style and their bodies dumped. Most of the victims have been Shias but increasingly in recent months groups of Sunnis have been killed.

The Muslim Clerics Association, an influential Sunni Arab group, has openly accused a militia loyal to one of Iraq’s main Shia parties of being behind the killing of Sunnis.

Sunni and Shia groups have held talks over the past few weeks to try to defuse the tension, and the Shia-led government says it is also exploring ways to give Sunni Arabs a bigger role in Iraqi politics.

Separately, Iraqi authorities released 304 foreign detainees including a Pakistani and returned them to Iran on Saturday after they had been held in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, from four to seven months, said police spokesman Othman al Duleimi.

He said the detainees had illegally entered Iraq from neighboring Iran to visit Shia holy shrines in Najaf and Karbala.

Al Qaeda’s front man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is in good health after his reported wounding, his organisation said, as seven people were killed in a car bombing in Saddam Hussein’s hometown. As US and Iraqi forces pressed an operation aimed at rooting out Zarqawi-linked insurgents in northwestern Iraq, his organisation sought to dispel reports that Iraq’s most wanted man was suffering from his wounds.

In the northwest, around 1,000 US and Iraqi troops continued their operation in the Euphrates Valley town of Haditha in a bid to root out insurgents loyal to Zarqawi who fled an earlier sweep near the Syrian border. A second marine was reported killed in the operation, in which 10 suspected militants, including a Muslim cleric, have also died, according to the US military. Gunmen have shot dead a former member of Kirkuk’s city council, Iraqi police said on Saturday, the latest killing of a local official in a city where tensions between Kurds and Arabs run high. agencies

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