Excited At least 53 dead as car bombs target Iraq police

At least 53 dead as car bombs target Iraq police


AFP – An injured child is carried by her mother following a car bomb in a residential neighbourhood in the
BAGHDAD (AFP) – More than a dozen apparently coordinated car bombs targeting Iraqi police and other attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda killed 53 people on Wednesday, just days before the US military ends its combat mission.
The trail of bloodshed started in the capital Baghdad before stretching to the north and south of the country, hitting 10 cities and towns in quick succession in tactics that bore the hallmark of the jihadist network.
Some 250 people were also wounded, security officials said, as a total of 14 car bombs wrought havoc for police and soldiers whose ability to protect the country is under close scrutiny as US forces have drawn down.
In the deadliest attack, a car bomb at a passport office in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, killed 20 people, including 15 police, and wounded 90 others, most of them police, Lieutenant Ali Hussein told AFP.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle at a police station in the northeastern suburb of Qahira, killing 15 people and wounding dozens more, security and medical officials said.
The attack in the mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhood took place at around 8 am (0500 GMT), according to an interior ministry official who gave the toll. "The victims included policemen and civilians," he said.
A doctor at Medical City Hospital said they had received the bodies of two women, two children and two police officers, and that 44 other people were receiving treatment.
A spike in unrest over the past two months has triggered concern that Iraqi forces are not yet ready to handle security on their own, especially with no new government formed in Baghdad since a March 7 general election.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Wednesday's attacks on Al-Qaeda and remnants of the Baath party of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein, who he said wanted "to shake people's confidence in the security forces."
"They (the security forces) are ready to bear the responsibility after US (combat) forces withdraw at the end of August," Maliki said in a statement.
The US army announced on Tuesday that troop levels were below 50,000 in line with President Barack Obama's directives as part of a "responsible drawdown" of troops, seven years on from the invasion which ousted Saddam.
The reduction has raised fears that Qaeda-linked insurgents will step up their attacks.
A separate car bomb in Baghdad killed two police and wounded seven civilians in the city centre, while two other police were shot dead in Al-Amel, a southern district, the interior ministry official said.
In the north of the country, a car bomb in the ethnically divided, oil hub of Kirkuk killed one person and wounded 11, said Colonel Adel Zain al-Abideen, the city's acting chief of police.
In Iraq's main northern city of Mosul, a car bomb killed four civilians and gunmen killed a lieutenant colonel at a police checkpoint.
In Muqdadiya, northeast of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded as a police patrol passed, killing three civilians. When troops arrived to investigate, a second bomb exploded, wounding six soldiers.
In western Iraq, three people, two of them police, were killed and 16 wounded in two car bombs, one of them at a police checkpoint in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a security official said.

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Now watches see Final plug on Gulf oil leak at least days away

We are saw this Final plug on Gulf oil leak at least days away

NEW ORLEANS – The government official overseeing the Gulf oil spill response said Saturday he wants additional tests done before ordering BP to finish drilling a relief well that will help plug the runaway well for good.
Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told reporters it could be late Monday or early Tuesday before officials know the results of those tests, which will be designed to minimize any potential risks with the final plugging procedure.
If Allen gives his final order to proceed with the relief well then, it could be next weekend before the relief well intercepts the blown-out well. Once that happens, engineers will pump in mud and cement to plug the well from below, a process known as the bottom kill.
Before that happens, Allen wants to know if pressure inside the well has to be decreased. He has instructed BP to provide an analysis to determine if the bottom kill could risk damaging the well further without some kind of pressure relief.
BP began drilling its primary relief well in early May to permanently seal the ruptured well. But about two weeks ago, around the time the company had done a successful static kill pumping mud and cement into the top of the well, executives began signaling that the bottom kill procedure might not be done. In recent days, Allen suggested that was a possibility.
But pressure tests this week reaffirmed the original plan.
"The relief well will be finished and the bottom kill will be executed," he said.

A month after plugging the wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico, the waters that were once blackened with gushing crude are now a clear mossy green, lapping the sides of ships stationed near the wellhead. On Saturday, the only dark shadows on the water appeared to be caused by clouds in an otherwise clear sky.
Despite the end of the immediate disaster, however, about a dozen ships are located near the relief wells, overseeing undersea robots and standing by to help with any containment needs that might arise.
Several miles away, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel had been slowly circling the site, using sonar to search for undersea oil leaks that might have been pushed up from the pressure of the cap on the wellhead. The ship has taken 384 water samples since July 28 that were being sent back to a lab to be tested for oil and, if necessary, matched to the same crude that had soiled the Gulf.
So far, Anne K. Lynch, commanding officer of the Henry B. Bigelow, said crews have not found anything to suggest a significant leak since the July 15 blocking of the crude from gushing into the Gulf.
"There's nothing scary," she said.
Allen also said that BP's failed blowout preventer may be replaced before the relief well is completed. He said when it is replaced, officials will take precautions to preserve it for evidence.
Investigators want to analyze the contraption to determine why it failed to prevent the Deepwater Horizon explosion April 20 that killed 11 workers and caused 206 million gallons of oil to spew from the well a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, BP warned residents of the Gulf region to watch out for scammers posing as company employees and seeking personal information or money for "safety training" and other purposes.
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Associated Press Writer Noaki Schwartz contributed to this report from aboard the NOAA ship Henry B. Bigelow.
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