Insurgents storm jail, kill 19 officers

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Insurgents stormed a jail around dawn Tuesday in the Sunni Muslim heartland north of Baghdad, killing 19 police and a courthouse guard in a prison break that freed dozens of prisoners and left 10 attackers dead, authorities said.\nAs many as 100 insurgents armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades stormed the judicial compound in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of the capital. The assault began after the attackers fired a mortar round into the police and court complex, said police Brig. Ali al-Jabouri.\nAt least 33 prisoners were freed in the jail break.\nAfter burning the police station, the insurgents detonated roadside bombs as they fled, taking the bodies of many of their dead comrades with them, police said. At least 13 policemen and civilians and 15 gunmen were wounded.\nLater Tuesday, a roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded three in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, authorities said.\nFive other police were wounded in two separate roadside bomb attacks targeting patrols in northern and southern Baghdad early Tuesday, police said.\nA U.S. soldier with the 4th Infantry Division was killed by small-arms fire while patrolling western Baghdad, the military said. At least 2,315 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.\nAlso in the capital, gunmen killed an employee of the mayor's office while he was driving in the Dora neighborhood, and police discovered eight blindfolded corpses, some of them showing signs of torture, officials said.\nThe execution-style killings have become an almost daily occurrence in a wave of sectarian violence that has left more than 1,000 Iraqis dead since the bombing last month of a Shiite Muslim shrine. On Monday, police found the bodies of at least 15 more people -- including that of a 13-year-old girl -- dumped in and near Baghdad.\nIn Washington, President Bush said he did not agree with former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Sunday, "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."\nBush said others inside and outside Iraq believe the nation has stopped short of civil war.\n"We all recognized that there is violence, that there is sectarian violence, but the way I look at the situation is the Iraqis looked and decided not to go into civil war," Bush said during a news conference.\nAs night fell Monday, a bomb struck a coffee shop in northern Baghdad, killing at least three people and injuring 23 others. The bomb was left in a plastic bag inside the shop in a market area of the Azamiyah neighborhood, police Maj. Falah al-Mohammadewi said.\nAt about the same time, gunmen killed two engineers leaving work at the Beiji oil refinery north of Baghdad, police Lt. Khalaf Ayed al-Janabi said.\nSeparately, the owner of a small grocery in downtown Baghdad was shot and killed.\nIn southeast Baghdad, a roadside bomb blew apart a minibus, killing four pilgrims returning from the holy city of Karbala, where millions of Shiites gathered to mark the 40th and final day of the annual mourning period for Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Five pilgrims on their way to Karbala were wounded in a drive-by shooting earlier in the day, police said.\nOtherwise, the commemoration passed largely without incident or the bomb attacks of the past two years.\nBaghdad's international airport remained closed Tuesday by authorities who cited the need to protect the Karbala commemoration.