Bombs killed at least 16 people Thursday in attacks across the Iraqi capital and its northern suburbs. According to the AP, police said bombs killed at least 16 people in scattered attacks across Baghdad and areas on the city's northern belts.
And the U.S. military announced the deaths of two U.S. troops, killed by a blast near their vehicle in Iraq's northern Ninevah province. Two other troops were injured by the blast, which occurred Wednesday, the military said in a statement.
A roadside bomb killed five people Thursday near a shelter used as a police recruiting center in northeast Baghdad's neighborhood of Binouk, police said. Six other people were hurt, they said.
In Balad Ruz, a city 45 miles northeast of the capital, another roadside bomb went off near a convoy carrying the police chief of Balad Ruz, Col. Faris al-Amirie, police said. Six of al-Amirie's guards died and eight others were wounded, but the chief escaped injury, they said.
And in Sadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police said a cluster of three attacks took place around 10:40 a.m., killing five people and wounding 18 others.
Meanwhile, Turkey's foreign minister said Thursday that any incursion by Turkish forces into Iraq would target Kurdish guerrilla fighters and their bases and "would not be an invasion." Ali Babacan said an upcoming meeting between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Bush "will determine the steps that Turkey would take." But if Turkey sends its troops into Iraq, "any cross-border attack would be aimed at hitting terrorist bases and would not be an invasion," he said.
According to him, some economic measures aimed at members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq already have been put in place, and Turkey is also considering stopping flights to the region.
So far, the Turkish military has limited its assaults against PKK fighters in Iraq to shelling and bombing just inside Iraq's side of the border zone.
