By TAREK EL-TABLAWY
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Three car bombs rocked northern Baghdad Sunday morning within a span of half an hour while another struck a Shiite holy city, killing at least 17 and wounding 44, police and provincial officials said.
The attacks came a day after a British military helicopter was apparently shot down in the southern city of Basra, triggering a confrontation in which jubilant Iraqis pelted British troops with stones, firebombs and chanted slogans in support of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi authorities said four British personnel aboard the helicopter were killed.
The attack in Karabala, home to one of the two holiest Shiite shrines, killed five people and wounded 19 near the provincial government building, said Hassanein al-Zubeidi, and aid to the governor, and police spokesman Rahman Mishawi.
It occurred at 9:30 a.m. - 10 minutes after the last blast in Baghdad - as workers were returning to their offices after the Islamic weekend, said al-Zubeidi. The bomber got within 300 yards of the heavily fortified government building, and set off the explosives in an area of heavy traffic. Eight cars were burned.
Police said smoke could be seen rising from the site, as authorities fired wildly in the air.
The worst strike in Baghdad - a suicide car bombing - targeted an Iraqi army patrol at 9:20 a.m. in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah. Ten people were killed 15 wounded, most of them Iraqi soldiers, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.
The first two Baghdad bombs targeted police patrols. Insurgents often target Iraqi police and soldiers, trying to discourage Sunni Arabs from joining government security forces.
A bomb a 8:50 a.m. missed the patrol but killed one civilian and wounded five, police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said.
Ten minutes later, the second car bomb went off near the private Ibn al-Haitham College in northern Baghdad. One civilian was killed and six were wounded, al-Mohammedawi said.
Iraqi police said Saturday that four British crew members died in the crash in Basra. Four Iraqi adults and a child were reported killed during the ensuing melee when Shiite gunmen exchanged fire with British soldiers who hurried to the scene. About 30 civilians were injured in the day's chaos, but the city was largely calm overnight.
The violence underscored that discontent over the presence of foreign soldiers has been growing among Iraq's majority Shiites even though they have generally steered clear of the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani sent a message to British Prime Tony Blair expressing his condolences.
``I can assure you that Iraqis continue to honor and appreciate the efforts and sacrifices made by her Majesty's forces, first in our liberation from the unspeakable tyranny of the Saddamist dictatorship and then in laying the foundations for a peaceful and democratic Iraq,'' said Talabani, a Kurd.
Basra police said the helicopter went down in a vacant lot between two houses after it was hit by a shoulder-fired missile - a weapon widely available among insurgent groups and armed militias in Iraq. He said the four crew members were killed.
British soldiers with armored vehicles rushed to the site, only to be pelted with rocks by a crowd of at least 250 people. Authorities said as many as three British armored vehicles were set on fire.
The crowd chanted ``we are all soldiers of al-Sayed,'' a reference to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ardent foe of foreign troops being in Iraq.
The British Defense Ministry confirmed only that there were ``casualties'' in the afternoon crash but refused to give a figure or discuss the cause.
A British spokeswoman, Capt. Kelly Goodall, said British soldiers who responded came ``under attack by a variety of weapons, including small arms fire, petrol bombs, as well as blast bombs and stone.''
She said the soldiers fired ``a small number of live rounds'' in self defense. She said there was some minor injuries among the troops on the ground, but gave no details.
The city was largely calm Sunday after an evening curfew. Authorites were trying to avert the kind of violence that erupted in September when British troops battled Shiite gunmen in Basra. The fighting was sparked by the arrest of two British undercover soldiers by Iraqi police, who have heavily infiltrated by Shiite militias. British forces raided the jail to free the men.
Trouble in the largely Shiite region is due in part to the growing influence of al-Sadr, who led two armed uprisings against U.S.-led forces in 2004 and who has been an outspoken critic of the U.S.-led foreign military mission.
Tensions boiled again in February when the London newspaper News of the World published video images that appeared to show British soldiers beating Iraqi civilians during a riot in Amarah in 2004.
The crash came at a tough time for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who angered many Britons, including members of his own Labour Party, by his support for the war. On Friday, Blair carried out a sweeping overhaul of his Cabinet after Labour suffered a drubbing in local elections, drawing calls for the prime minister to set a firm timetable for leaving office.
Elsehwere in Iraq, the bound and bullet-ridden bodies of eight men were found early Sunday morning in eastern Baghdad, said police Lt. Bilal Ali. The men, ranging in age from 25-30, appeared to have been tortured and were dumped near a garbage container.
Authorities also found four charred bodies dumped in two separate locations in the violent southern Baghdad district of Dora, where kidnapping victims frequently turn up murdered, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said Sunday. The men, three of whom were brothers, were found late Saturday night and had been burned.
Two bodies of two people shot to death were also found in eastern Baghdad Sunday morning, said police Cap. Haider Ibrahim
Fierce clashes also broke out at early Sunday between gunmen and police in the southwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Saydiyah. The hour-long fighting left three policemen wounded and led to the arrest of three of the gunmen.
Unidentified gunmen also shot dead a man in another southwestern Baghdad neighborhood as he headed to work at a wholesale market, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.
A roadside bomb hit a police patrol in eastern Mosul, killing three policemen and wounding another, said police Maj. Gen. Wathiq Mohammed Abdul-Qadir.
Also, the U.S. military announced the arrest of three suspected insurgents in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. The men were fleeing the area when they were observed by a patrol on Saturday. At the scene, U.S. troops found a weapons cache.
The U.S. military also said two insurgents were killed in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, Saturday while they were planting a roadside bomb.