http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/in...rtner=homepage
September 26, 2005
Attacks in Iraq Kill 16, Including 5 Teachers Slain at School
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 26 -A group of armed men burst into a primary school in a town south of Baghdad today, rounded up five teachers, marched them to an empty classroom and executed them, a police official said. All of those killed were Shiite.
It was close to the end of the school day, about 1 p.m., in the town of Musayyib, 38 miles south of Baghdad, when 10 gunmen dressed as police officers entered the building, and shot the teachers to death. The men also shot and killed the teachers' driver, who was waiting outside to take them home for the day, the official said.
The attack, particularly cruel as it took place while children were still at school, was the worst in a string of attacks across Iraq that left at least 16 people dead, including three American soldiers who were killed when their vehicles hit roadside bombs.
In Musayyib on Sunday evening, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated his payload in a crowd of civilians near a well-known Shiite shrine, killing 6 people and wounding 19, Interior Ministry officials said. Attacks on Shiite civilians, one of the Sunni-led insurgency's chief targets, have grown in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most notorious terrorist, declared an "all-out war on Iraq's Shiites."
In the attacks on the Americans, the American military said in a statement that a military policeman was killed 50 miles southeast of Baghdad, while two American soldiers were killed when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in western Baghdad.
Also today, a suicide bomber detonated his car at the gates of the Iraqi police academy, killing at least seven people and wounding 30 in the second attack in as many days on the Iraqi police. Among the dead were two policemen and five civilians.
On Sunday, a suicide bomber swerved his sedan across a highway median and detonated it in a police convoy in eastern Baghdad. That incident was the worst of several attacks and gun battles that Iraqi officials said left at least 25 people dead and dozens wounded.
The violence over the past few days has occurred amid demonstrations and sharpening sectarian tensions across Iraq over the coming nationwide referendum on the constitution. American military officials have said they expect to see more bloodshed as the Oct. 15 vote approaches.
Also today, American forces opened fire on a minibus, an interior ministry spokesman said, killing one passenger and wounding four. The spokesman said an Egyptian telecommunications employee was kidnapped when his car was intercepted.
Musayyib was the site of a suicide bombing in July that left 71 people dead. That attack also seemed to have been aimed at least in part at Shiite worshipers.
-Rudey
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