Iraq Watch: October 31, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A massive suicide suicide car bomb in the southern, predominately Shiite city of Basra late Monday killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 40 others.

The blast occurred around 8:30 p.m. in the busy Algiers district of the port city where people were enjoying the evening after breaking the daylong fast observed by Muslims during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The suicide bomber apparently targeted a passing Iraqi police patrol.

Elsewhere, seven U.S. service members were killed in three separate roadside bombings over the past two days the U.S. military announced on Monday. Four Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed by an IED southwest of Baghdad on Monday while two other soldiers assigned to the 29th Brigade Combat Team died in a roadside bombing early this morning. Separately, a Marine was killed in an IED attack near Al Amiriyah on Sunday.

In other violence Monday, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and four injured in a roadside bombing near the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. Two other Iraqi soldiers died in an insurgent mortar attack in Baquba, 40 miles north of the capital.

Also, the U.S. military announced that it had bombed a suspected insurgent safe house in the city of Karabilah, near the Syrian border on Monday. The military added that a 'senior' al-Qaida in Iraq leader was believed to be in the house at the time of the air strikes.

However, residents of the Sunni city said many of the killed and wounded were civilians.

A taxi driver interviewed by the Washington Post who went to the bomb site stated, "If the killed were only Zarqawi's men, we would say it is a war and they had the right to do it, but this time, the Americans killed many Iraqis to get Qaeda fighters."

Another citizen of Karbilah angrily told the Associated Press, "At least 20 innocent people were killed by the U.S. warplanes. Why are the Americans killing families? Where are the insurgents? We don't see democracy. We just see destruction."