Weekend of violence in Iraq leaves more civilians, on-ground troops injured, dead

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gunmen seized 10 workers from a bakery Sunday in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, while a car bomb exploded near a university in the northern city of Mosul, killing a woman and wounding 19 other people, police said.\nA small parked truck bomb exploded in southwestern Baghdad, killing three people inside the vehicle, police said. In Baqouba, north of Baghdad, gunmen killed three people, including one carrying an Iranian passport, police said.\nThe scattered attacks came after a day of unrelenting violence that killed more than two dozen people as insurgents foiled heightened security measures, dealing a blow to the Iraqi government's pledge to bring peace to the capital.\nThousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops also set up outposts Sunday west of Baghdad as part of an operation to establish Iraqi army bases in the volatile \nSunni Arab city of Ramadi.\nU.S. commanders stressed that the operation was not a large-scale assault on the city, despite reports by Arab television networks and some Western outlets of an impending attack on the city similar to the 2004 operation to root out insurgents in Fallujah.\nThey said it was an "isolation" tactic to prevent insurgents from receiving supplies or reinforcements from \noutside.\nTwo long columns of U.S. and Iraqi armored vehicles met little resistance late Saturday as they encircled the southern side Ramadi, the capital of volatile Anbar province, although a handful of roadside bombs were discovered and detonated.\nInsurgents also fired two mortar shells that landed about 500 yards away from where the troops were establishing the outposts Sunday. U.S. troops fired back, but no injuries were reported.\nIn Baghdad, gunmen arrived in two cars, broke into the bakery and abducted the 10 workers in the northern suburb of Kazimiyah, police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said. It was the same neighborhood where a mortar shell struck a well-known market Saturday, killing four people and wounding 13.\nA mortar shell Sunday hit the al-Sadiq University for Islamic Studies on Palestine Street, one of the capital's main thoroughfares, wounding five students and a teacher, police Lt. Ahmed Qasim said.\nThe Mosul car bomb was apparently directed at U.S. convoy. It exploded near Mosul University, and most of the 19 wounded were female students, police Brig. Abdel-Hamid \nKhala said.\nPolice also found the bullet-riddled bodies of 10 men who showed signs of torture in several areas of Baghdad, and the body of a man who was shot in the head was found in Karbala, 50 miles south of the capital.\nThe spree of bombings and mortar attacks in the Baghdad area -- including eight attacks Saturday that killed at least 27 people and wounded 27 -- was an embarrassment for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who ordered more police and army checkpoints for the city last week to restore security for its six million residents.