Tales of occupation

Meanwhile, in that other war...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 17 — A car bombing in the Sadr City district of Baghdad killed at least seven people and wounded more than 20 on Thursday morning, the authorities said.

The blast was the latest of several recent attacks in the district, a densely populated area controlled by the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. It signaled that full-scale sectarian fighting was continuing in the capital despite the extra American troops deployed there.

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South of Baghdad, an American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol, the United States military said in a statement.

West of Baghdad, in an area rife with Sunni Arab insurgents, the police said a man had been killed and two of his sons wounded when gunmen fired at him as he waited in line at a gas station. In a similar incident, gunmen killed one man and wounded two others near a gas station in Yarmuk.

A suicide bomber in the upscale Baghdad neighborhood of Mansur blew up his vehicle as a police patrol passed, wounding five people, including three policemen, an Interior Ministry official said. At a supermarket nearby, an unidentified body was found handcuffed and showing signs of torture.

About 25 miles south, the authorities found six bodies with multiple gunshot wounds in the Tigris River. The dead men had been blindfolded, with their hands bound.

Six more people were killed in shootings in and near Baquba, north of the capital, news agencies reported. Three of the dead — shot at busy market — were brothers who owned an agricultural equipment shop. Another victim died after gunmen stole his car.

The United States military announced that a soldier had died from “enemy action” on Wednesday in Anbar Province, where American troops regularly fight fierce battles with Sunni insurgents.

In a rural area of Babil Province, south of Baghdad, Iraqi Army soldiers discovered three kidnapped police officers in the trunk of a car after clashing with gunmen at a checkpoint, according to an American military statement. The freed officers said two other officers had been abducted and taken away in vehicles.

And the Iraqi Prime Minister is all but begging the U.S. to leave.

Even as the violence continued, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, speaking at a news conference with the visiting prime minister of Slovakia just a few hours after the Sadr City bombing, insisted that Iraqi forces were ready to take over security for most of the country.

Mr. Maliki insisted that Iraqi Army and police units “would be able to fill the vacuum if multinational forces withdrew,” echoing an assertion by President Jalal Talabani two weeks ago that Iraqis would be able to police their own people by the end of the year.

American officials have offered no equivalent time line for a major troop withdrawal. Indeed, they have had to move more troops into the capital as sectarian and insurgent attacks have increased.

Pentagon statistics show that the number of roadside bombs in Iraq rose to 2,625 exploded or found in July, the highest total of the war. And Iraqi government figures released this week said that nearly 3,500 civilians were killed in July — a death toll nearly double the count in January.

With talk like that, no wonder the Cheney administration has soured on that democracy thing.