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ReutersBAGHDAD, June 21 (Reuters) - A barrage of mortar bombs hit Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone on Thursday and several plumes of smoke could be seen rising near buildings housing the Iraqi parliament and government offices, Reuters reporters said.
On the other side of the river Tigris, a thick plume of black smoke could be seen near the area where a suicide truck bomb partly demolished a Shi'ite mosque and killed 87 people on Tuesday. The origin of the smoke was not immediately known.
At least seven mortar rounds could be heard slamming into the Green Zone, which houses many Iraqi government ministries as well as the U.S., British and other Western embassies.
It was unclear if there were any casualties.
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Iraq blasts belie U.S. optimism
The Iraq security plan is succeeding, U.S. officials said, even as three more mosques were bombed.
BY MIKE DRUMMOND AND LAITH HAMMOUDI
McClatchy News Service
BAGHDAD -- Inside a fortified conference room and through the prism of U.S. and Iraqi military officials, a security plan to pacify the country was working on Wednesday. Outside, extremists blew up mosques, lobbed mortars into Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone and generated a steady drumbeat of violence.
Just hours before a top U.S. military spokesman said that troop buildups, added checkpoints and other measures launched in February were showing signs of success, suspected Shiite militiamen bombed two Sunni mosques south of Baghdad. An explosion damaged a third Sunni mosque south of the capital hours later.
No deaths were reported in the morning bombings of the Usama Bin Zaid and Abdallah Al Jobori mosques in Iskandariyah and in the afternoon one at the Sfoog mosque in Jbala. But coming the day after a truck bombing outside a Shiite mosque in the capital killed at least 78 people, the attacks stoked fears that retaliatory bombings of Muslim religious sites would escalate.
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