Saturday, September 19, 2009 BAGHDAD: Seven people were killed and 21 others wounded by a car bomb just outside Baghdad on Friday evening, a security official said. The bomb exploded in the town of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, at around 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) in a popular market as people were shopping for food to break the fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The town lies within a confessionally mixed region known as the Triangle of Death because of the frequency of insurgent attacks during the worst of Iraq's insurgency in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion. The number of violent deaths in Iraq hit a 13-month high in August, raising fresh concerns about stability after the government admitted that security is worsening. Government statistics showed that 456 people -- 393 civilians, 48 police and 15 Iraqi soldiers -- were killed. That was the highest monthly toll since July 2008, when 465 died.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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