voa标准英语2008-Explosions Rock Baghdad and Mosul

Terrorists are redoubling their efforts to shake a fragile calm, which has prevailed in Iraq in recent weeks, with multiple explosions aimed at Iraqi police and military targets. In the worst incident, two back-to-back explosions targeted Iraq's police academy.

Police sources say that both a car-bomb and a suicide attacker blew up in quick succession. Many of those killed and wounded were police officers and recruits standing 1 near the entrance of the academy on Palestine Street. Until recently the area had been closed to traffic in response to a bloody 2 suicide-bombing targeting the academy, two years ago.

Meanwhile, in the turbulent northern city of Mosul, a suicide car-bomber blew himself up alongside a joint 3 US-Iraqi patrol.

Most of the victims were civilians 4, but several Iraqi policemen were among the casualties.

Earlier, a roadside bombing wounded Major-General Mudhar al-Malwah, a senior defense 5 ministry 6 official, killing 7 a number of his bodyguards 8, according to Al Arabiya TV.

Just after the bombing, US army Captain Errol Davis indicated that five Iraqi civilians were also wounded in the incident:

"The General was wounded and five local national innocent people were wounded as well, and one individual unfortunately was killed," said Davis.

The bombing appears to be symbolic 9, because al-Malwa was reportedly involved in trying to persuade former Iraqi officers from Saddam Hussein's regime to lay down their arms and end their insurgency 10 against the current Iraqi government.

Defense Ministry officials say that General al-Malwa was also involved with Sunni "Awakening 11" groups called the "Sons of Iraq", which have joined forces with the U.S. forces to combat al Qaida.

Violence across Iraq has decreased dramatically since the Sunni "Awakening" groups took up arms against al Qaida.

Some analysts 12 have speculated that the upsurge in attacks in Iraq is a response to the recent parliamentary approval of the controversial U.S. Iraq security pact 13, which was bitterly opposed by supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr.

Joost Hiltermann, Deputy Middle East Program Director of the International Crisis Group thinks, however, that the violence is probably more of an ongoing 14 phenomenon, than a reaction to the new U.S. security pact.

"I would not necessarily link it to the accord, I think we have seen a general slight degree, a slight increase rather in violence in Baghdad and of course in Mosul we have had violence throughout and it hasn't really changed much," said Hiltermann. "So, I think in the run up to (January) provincial 15 elections we will see more of that. The situation is still very fragile, military control of Baghdad and Mosul and other areas is still very tenuous 16. So, it is very difficult to prevent these attacks from taking place. There is still plenty of spoilers throughout especially al-Qaida, especially some insurgents 17 who never went away and again in mixed population areas like Mosul and Baghdad they have more motive 18 and more permissive terrain 19 to operate. So, I would suspect that you won't see a decrease of violence, but you may not see a major increase either."

The month of November did see a spike 20 in violence, according to a fresh Iraqi government report, which indicates that 340 Iraqis were killed across the country last month.