Car bomb kills 6 as rebels hit Baghdad

Rebeals bracing for a US-led assault on their Falluja and Ramadi strongholds showed their muscle on Tuesday with a bloody car bombing in Bag...

Rebeals bracing for a US-led assault on their Falluja and Ramadi strongholds showed their muscle on Tuesday with a bloody car bombing in Baghdad, strikes on oil pipelines and several attacks on Iraqi security forces.

A morning car bomb blast at the Education Ministry brought fresh carnage to the busy streets of Baghdad, killing six people and wounding eight, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. The blast in Baghdad’s Sunni Adhamiya district damaged the Education Ministry building and destroyed 31 cars.

Saboteurs mounted the biggest attacks yet on Iraq’s oil infrastructure, blowing up four pipelines in the North and halting most exports via Turkey, oil officials said.

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Monday night’s pipeline attacks also sharply reduced crude supplies to Iraq’s biggest refinery at Baiji. In the northern city of Mosul, a suspected car bomb blew up near an Iraqi National Guard patrol, killing two guards and wounding four, witnesses and survivors said. A group led by Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the attack and said in a web posting that Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s battle against insurgents was ‘‘an impossible dream”.

Roadside blasts and car bombs killed three other members of the security forces and wounded scores in the Sunni towns of Samarra, Abu Ghraib and Haditha.

Zarqawi’s group, in an Internet video, showed the beheading of Japanese hostage Shosei Koda as he lay on a US flag. Al Qaeda Organisation of Holy War in Iraq warned Tokyo to withdraw its forces from Iraq or ‘‘drown in the hell of the Mujahideen” along with ‘‘crusader forces”.

Nepal, still reeling from the killing of 12 of its nationals by militants in Iraq in August, said it was trying to seek the release of the Nepali hostage.

—Reuters