Iraq Watch: March 22, 2006

Police Station Attack Repelled; Shiite Pilgrims Targeted in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq - For the second time in as many days, militants launched an attack on an Iraqi police station. Following Tuesday's brazen and well-planned assault on a federal compound in Muqdadiyah, which resulted in the deaths of at least 20 Iraqi security forces and the freeing of over 30 prisoners, insurgents on Wednesday barraged an Iraqi special forces center in Madain, 16 miles south of Baghdad.

Around 60 insurgents participated in Wednesday's assault against the Iraqi Interior Ministry-run Third Public Order Brigade compound in Madain. The attack began when, according to authorities, guerillas struck the center with a bombardment of mortar fire followed quickly by masked gunmen yielding automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The ensuing firefight left at least four Iraqi police officers dead including Col. Ahmad Salim Daher, deputy commander of the elite anti-terror unit according to the New York Times.

Responding to the gunbattle U.S. and Iraqi forces were able to apprehend at least 50 of the alleged perpetrators.

Madain is a religiously mixed agricultural town located inside Iraq's infamous "Triangle of Death," an area south of Baghdad known for its sectarian violence.

Meanwhile, in the capital city, gunmen attacked Shiite pilgrims returning from the Ashoura religious festival in Karbala commemorating the death of the revered Imam Hussein. At least six Shiites were killed and over 50 were wounded in the markedly sectarian attack.

AFP reports that Iraqi police later discovered the executed bodies of 13 men, also believed to be pilgrims, dumped in western Baghdad near the area of the shootings.

To the south, in the port city of Basra, two British soldiers were wounded and their civilian interpreter was killed in a roadside bomb explosion.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed three men transporting goods near Baqouba. As Iraqi police responded to the scene, a bomb detonated injuring one policeman.