Thursday, December 24, 2009 MOSUL: A pre-Christmas attack on a church killed two people in the Iraqi city of Mosul Wednesday while a Sunni Arab candidate died in a bombing in Fallujah, the first such murder ahead of March polls. They were among 13 people killed in violence across the country, despite security forces ramping up their presence ahead of Christmas and the Shiite commemoration ceremonies of Ashura. In Mosul, two people were killed and five others wounded Wednesday morning when "a handcart used to carry flour, left across the street from the Syrian Orthodox church of St Thomas, exploded," witness Hamis Paulos said. A hospital official in the main northern city said the two people killed were Muslims, based on examination of their identity papers. "Christians are being targeted during Christmas time -- the security forces, police and army must provide security, the police and army are responsible for this," said Father Abdul Massih Dalmay of the church. "Is the number of security forces not enough? There is negligence on the part of the security forces." The attack was the sixth on Christians in Mosul in less than a month, and came after the army said it put its forces on alert in areas with significant Christian populations because of intelligence they could be attacked.
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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