Bloomberg

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- At least 53 people died in violence in Iraq that included a U.S. air strike near Fallujah, two car bombings in Baghdad, and clashes in the capital and in Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi Health Ministry and the U.S. military said.

Forty-four people were killed today in the strike near Fallujah, west of the capital, and at least 27 were hurt, Health Ministry spokesman Saad al-Amily said in a telephone interview from Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi security forces have struggled to quell attacks by insurgents across Iraq since Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's administration took sovereignty on June 28. Fighting this month has stretched from Baghdad and Fallujah in central Iraq to Tal Afar in the north.

The bombings in Baghdad killed seven people and injured at least 21, according to the ministry spokesman and e-mailed military statements. Two died and 21 were hurt in the clashes between the U.S.-led military and insurgents in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, and in Baghdad's Haifa Street, al-Amily said.

ledger-enquirer
FALLUJAH, Iraq - An American jet fired a missile at a house where about 10 members of an al-Qaida-linked group were believed to be meeting in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah on Friday, police and the U.S. military said. At least three people were killed.

The military said in a statement it carried out a "successful precision strike on the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network."

Toronto Star

KIRKUK, Iraq — A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb near a crowd of people waiting to apply for jobs with the Iraqi National Guard in the northern city of Kirkuk today, killing at least 20 people and wounding 16, officials said....

...Earlier in Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded in a small sidestreet in the city center today, killing one man and seriously wounding two in a passing car, police and witnesses said.

Residents identified the three men as Iraqis who worked as security guards at the nearby al-Sadir Hotel, a heavily fortified complex where U.S. civilian contractors and other Westerners involved in Iraq's reconstruction effort are known to live and work....

...Also today, a senior official with Iraq's state-run North Oil Co. survived an assassination attempt when his convoy came under attack in the northeastern city of Mosul, police said.

Mohammed Zibari, the head of the company's oil products department in the Nineveh province, was traveling in a three-vehicle convoy on his way to work in Mosul when unidentified gunmen opened fire, killing five of his bodyguards and wounding four others, said police Lt. Mohammed Ali....