Bomb blasts mar Gates’ visit to Iraq

updated 12:32 p.m. ET Dec. 5, 2007

BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded in a largely Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad on Wednesday and killed at least 16 people, police said, while Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a visit to the capital that security and stability were within reach, although more work is needed.

It was the deadliest of least four car bombs in Iraq on Wednesday that killed 25 people across the country. Earlier, a blast went off in the northern city of Mosul, where Gates had landed on his sixth trip to Iraq.

Gunfire and sirens followed the bombing in Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood, and a plume of smoke rose in the sky.

Karradah has frequently been hit by car bombings, but attacks have tapered off in recent months. Cafes, shops and kebab stands have flourished anew in the neighborhood.

Firas Adel, who owns a clothing store about 400 yards from the site of the explosion, said terrified bystanders fled when the bomb went off.

“The police prevented us from getting to the site, but I saw the wounded screaming for help, including a teenage friend of mine who lost both his feet,” Adel said. “There are people who want to end the security improvements and bring back chaos.”

Gates: ‘A secure, stable Iraq is within reach’
Police and hospital officials said at least 16 people were killed and 32 wounded in the explosion, which took place across the Tigris River from the Green Zone shortly before Gates’ news conference with Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi.

“I believe that a secure, stable Iraq is within reach,” Gates said, adding however: “We need to be patient.”

He said that Iraqis who have been fighting al-Qaida and other military forces on the local level must be integrated into the formal Iraqi security forces.

Gates noted a decline in overall violence in Iraq during recent months, that has led to “a growing sense of normalcy and hope.” But he acknowledged increasing militant and terrorist activities in northern Iraq.

Army Col. Tony Thomas, a brigade commander, said senior commanders in the north are looking for additional U.S. troops and also would like the return of 1,400 Iraqi troops sent to Baghdad to provide “more combat power” to help stabilize areas such as Diyala province, Mosul and Samara.

The U.S. is pressing Iraqi leaders to take advantage of the improved security to make the political reforms needed to stabilize the fledgling democracy.

U.S. soldiers killed in ‘complex attack’
The American military also announced the deaths of three soldiers from a “complex attack” on Tuesday involving a roadside bomb and small arms fire north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. A fourth soldier was wounded, it said.

At least 3,886 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians.

Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood has frequently been hit by car bombings, although attacks have tapered off in recent months with the influx of U.S. troops to the capital.

In the Mosul blast, police said explosives hidden in a parked car killed a civilian and wounded seven others across the city from the U.S. military base where Gates arrived.

The deadliest attack Wednesday was in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where a suicide car bomber targeted a bus station and killed five civilians, police said. At least 20 others were wounded.

In oil-rich Kirkuk, a parked car bomb killed three Kurdish soldiers in a convoy guarding a police chief traveling from Sulaimaniyah to the east, said police Brig. Anwar Qadir. At least 12 others were wounded — all members of the Kurdish peshmerga forces, he said.

Kirkuk is an ethnically mixed city near Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, about 180 miles north of Baghdad. The area has seen a spike in violence in recent months, which U.S. military officials attribute to the northward flow of militants after American offensives around Baghdad.

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