Iraq Watch: September 13, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - As Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to meet with American President Bush the seemingly endless violence plaguing Iraq continued unabated.

In the increasing volatile south, four people were killed in a roadside bombing south of Basra. An Iraqi police captain reported that the four killed were American security contractors but U.S. officials were unable to confirm the report.

In Baghdad, at least five mortar rounds were fired at the heavily fortified 'Gren Zone' on Tuesday. No injuries were reported although the Sunni insurgent group Jeish al-Ta'eifa al-Mansoura (The Victorious Army Group) claimed in an unverifiable web statement that the mortar shells contained chemical agents.

Also in Baghdad, two Kurdish truck drivers transporting concrete blast walls were ambushed and killed.

At least two Iraqi civilians were killed and 13 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives on a bus near the Shiite city of Hillah, 60 miles south of the capital.

The U.S. and Iraqi military continued their counter-terror offensive in western Iraq lauching raids and air-strikes in Haditha and al-Qaim. The radis are part of a broader operation to root out suspected terrorists from dusty Sunni towns located all along the Euphrates River.

American and Iraqi forces also kept up their pursuit on insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar as part of Operation Restoring Rights on Tuesday.