Officials: Iraq security plan succeeding despite 3 more mosques bombed

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.

Twenty-nine unidentified bodies were found dumped on Baghdad's streets

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