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Attacks Halt Production At Iraq's Largest Refinery
In Baghdad, people crowd around cars that residents said were destroyed by a U.S. tank driving through a narrow street during a predawn raid. In other areas, transportation was limited by fuel shortages and higher gasoline prices.
(By Hadi Mizban -- Associated Press)
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"We cannot stop the armed men, because they know where we live," said Lt. Col. Saffah Mahjan, police chief for the Baiji refinery. "They know our families. They know everything about us."
In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. William H. McCoy Jr. of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told news agencies that attacks on Iraqi contractors working on reconstruction reached a record in December. Thirty-two attacks around the country killed six contractors, wounded five and left two in kidnappers' hands, McCoy said.
The assaults on reconstruction efforts have hit Iraq's oil and electricity systems the hardest. Oil exports are hovering at or below 2 million barrels per day rather than the 2.5 million target set by U.S. officials. Insurgent sabotage has left Baghdad with an average of only six hours of electricity a day.
In violence Thursday, gunmen killed 12 members of a Shiite Muslim family near Latifiyah, a Sunni Arab-dominated town about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Police said the victims, all men, were taken from their homes, packed into a minivan and shot.
In the capital, a suicide bomber killed a police officer, gunmen assassinated an Iraqi driver working for a French company, and a college student was killed in a drive-by shooting, according to officials and news agencies.
The U.S. military said airstrikes by F-15s in Kirkuk on Tuesday killed 10 men it said were insurgents, three of them in the act of planting bombs.
The insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq threatened on Thursday to kill five kidnapped employees of Sudan's Embassy in Baghdad in 48 hours unless the Khartoum government removed its diplomatic mission from Iraq.
Aldin reported from Baiji. Special correspondents Naseer Nouri and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad contributed to this report.
