Baghdad bombing kills 4 Americans, 6 Iraqis

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad announced that the government employees killed in the blast were civilians with the State and Defense departments.

BAGHDAD (MCT) - A bomb hidden in a meeting room killed two U.S. soldiers and two American government employees Tuesday at a local council office in the Baghdad district of Sadr City, according to the U.S. military.

U.S. authorities said an Italian working for the Defense Department was killed in the blast. Iraqi authorities said six Iraqis also died, bringing the total death toll to at least 11. An American soldier and 10 Iraqis were wounded, including three Iraqi council members.

The blast ripped through the municipal building just before elections to pick a chairman for a district advisory council in Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite Muslim slum that supporters of the militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr mostly control.

Lt. Col. Steven Stover, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, said the bomb appeared to target the main candidate for the post and the Americans visiting for a regular meeting.

Stover said U.S. troops detained three suspects who tested positive for explosives residue. American investigators blamed the attack on "special groups," the military's term for cells of Shiite extremists with alleged links to Iran. The Iranian government has denied that it's fielding terrorist groups in Iraq.

"We say special groups because we believe the perpetrator to be a criminal from the area, operating outside the law," Stover said, noting that the explosives were planted in the meeting room and weren't the work of a suicide bomber. "We have a good idea who was behind the attack, but are not releasing any additional information."

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad announced that the government employees killed in the blast were civilians with the State and Defense departments. The State Department employee was identified as Steven L. Farley of Guthrie, Okla.

Farley was a member of the U.S. embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team for the Sadr City and Adhamiyah districts, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said. Such reconstruction teams work alongside Iraqi officials to restore services and security in volatile areas of Iraq.

In Berlin, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Farley's devotion to public service and said the deaths Tuesday were "a terrible reminder of the dangers that our colleagues face daily in advancing our critical foreign-policy goals."

An American and an Italian of Iraqi origin who was working with U.S. troops as an interpreter were the two Defense Department employees; their names were withheld pending notification of relatives.

This was the third incident in two days involving members of Iraq's local councils, whom militants deride as "collaborators" with the Americans.

Iraqi police said they'd discovered the body of the council chairman for the Abu Disheer neighborhood in south Baghdad on Tuesday. He was a Shiite allied with al-Sadr's movement, police said.

On Monday, Sunni Muslim council member Raed Mahmoud Ajil, whom relatives described as having suffered from severe depression and epilepsy, opened fire on U.S. troops after a joint meeting on reconstruction in the city of Madain, south of Baghdad. Ajil killed two American soldiers before U.S. forces shot and killed him. Three other American soldiers and an interpreter were wounded.

In Mosul, at least 90 civilians were wounded in a vehicle bomb which the U.S. military blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq.

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© 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.