58 killed in Iraq as attacks rage on. US says violence is "confined"

[Bluebear]

I'm so relieved it is "confined". :sarcasm:

BAGHDAD -- The US military spokesman in Iraq asserted yesterday that major violence is largely confined to three of the country's 18 provinces, but fighting there raged on, with at least 58 people killed in execution-style slayings, bombings, and gunbattles.

For the third straight day, Sunni insurgents hit a major police and jail facility, this time with a suicide car bombing that killed 25 in central Baghdad. The attacker detonated his explosives at the entrance to the Interior Ministry Major Crimes unit in the Karradah district, killing 10 civilians and 15 policemen, authorities said.

As insurgent forces raised the stakes with the attacks, the US military announced late yesterday that it was in the second day of an operation with Iraqi soldiers ''to disrupt anti-Iraqi forces and to find and destroy terrorist caches in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad."...

'There is not widespread violence across Iraq," Lynch said. ''There is not. Seventy-five percent of the attacks still take place in Baghdad, al-Anbar, or Salaheddin. And in the other 15 provinces, they all averaged less than six attacks a day, and 12 of those provinces averaged less than two attacks a day."

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/03/24/58_killed_in_iraq_as_attacks_rage_on/