BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi authorities have taken a brigade of up to 700 policemen out of service and put members under investigation for "possible complicity" with death squads following a mass kidnapping earlier this week, the U.S. military said Wednesday. Meanwhile, a series of bombs went off in rapid succession in a shopping district in a mainly Christian neighborhood of Baghdad, killing 16 people and wounding 87, police said. The dead were among 26 people killed in attacks across Iraq.
The U.S. military also announced the death of two soldiers — the latest in what has been one of the bloodiest stretches of days for American troops this year. At least 17 troops have been killed in combat since Saturday, including eight U.S. soldiers who died in gunbattles and bomb blasts Monday in Baghdad — the most killed in a single day in the capital since July 2005.
A suicide bomber attacked an Iraqi police base in the town of Ramadi, an insurgent hotspot west of Baghdad, but guards shot at the explosives-packed vehicle, detonating it before it could hit the base, police said.
CountryWatch: Iraq
