Iraq Watch: March 23, 2006

58 Killed in Attacks; Hostages Freed

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 58 Iraqis were killed in attacks around the country including 25 who died in a car bombing near the Iraqi Interior Ministry Major Crimes Unit in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, U.S. and British forces rescued three Christian peace activists who were taken hostage by the previously unknown "Swords of Righteousness Brigades" nearly four months ago.

The captives – Briton Norman Kember and Canadians Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney – were rescued from a western Baghdad home early Thursday morning following a tip received from a recently captured detainee.

American Tom Fox, abducted along with the other three Christian Peacemaker Teams employees, was found executed March 9 in Baghdad.

In Thursday's bloodiest attack a suicide car bomber detonated his explosive-laden vehicle at the entrance of Iraq's Major Crimes Unit headquarters in the Karradah district of central Baghdad. At least 15 police and 10 civilians were killed in the massive explosion. The blast at the Interior Ministry-run complex also wounded more than 35 people.

Nine Iraqi soldiers, meanwhile, were slain in a separate suicide car bombing near the sprawling al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq's volatile Anbar province according to Reuters.

Elsewhere, in the religiously mixed Shurta neighborhood of southwestern Baghdad a car bomb exploded outside of a Shiite mosque leaving at least six Iraqis dead and over 20 injured.

Also in the capital city, the executed bodies of six unidentified individuals were discovered. Near the former rebel-stronghold of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, American troops reported finding eight more corpses.

Following the February 22 bombing of the sacred Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra, scores of discarded bodies – believed to be victims of sectarian tit-for-tat reprisal killings – have been found throughout the war-torn nation.

Additionally, at least seven Iraqi policemen were killed in bombings and shootings across the country Thursday.

In southern Iraq, a roadside bomb attack claimed the life of a Danish soldier Thursday. The blast, which also wounded another Danish soldier, took place during a combat patrol. The bulk of Denmark's military contingency, consisting of some 530 troops, is located outside the southern port-city of Basra. Thursday's death marks the third Danish fatality since the U.S.-led war in Iraq began in March 2003.