Rebel attacks on police leave eight dead in Iraq
Insurgents gunned down a neighbourhood police chief and set off a suicide bomb near a patrol guarding a holy shrine, part of a series of attacks today targeting Iraqi security forces and leaving at least eight people dead, including four police officers.
Gunmen opened fire on a car carrying police Col. Abdul Karim Fahad Abbass as he headed to work in the sprawling south-eastern Doura quarter, killing the neighbourhood station chief and his driver, Capt. Falah al-Muhimadawi said.
Across the Tigris River that bisects Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in the Hay Al-Amil area, killing one policeman and wounding five others, Capt. Thalib Thamir said.
In Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up near a police patrol that was protecting a holy shrine. Two policemen and three civilians were killed, police and hospital officials said. At least five other people were injured.
In the northern city of Mosul, two Iraqi army soldiers were injured when attackers opened fire on their car, Dr. Bahaa al-Deen al-Bakry said. The two were dressed in civilian clothes at the time of the attack, he said.
A university professor, Waad Mohammed Hussein, was also fatally shot as he was driving from home to work in the Zanjely neighbourhood, said al-Bakry said.
Insurgents appear to be focusing attacks on Iraqi security forces, who are slowly taking over the fight against Iraq’s insurgency in an effort that US officials hope will pave the way for an eventual withdrawal of US troops.
In Kut, 100 miles south-east of Baghdad, 150 special forces and 50 border guards graduated today, the latest additions to Iraq’s growing security forces.
Also today, Al-Arabiya correspondent Jawad Kadhim reported on the Arab TV station that Iraqi police arrested correspondent Wael Essam. Kadhim said Essam arrived in Iraq four days ago on assignment and was stopped by a police checkpoint on the road to the airport, Kadhim said.
“They arrested him after they found some tapes, journalistic tapes, in his possession,” he said.
Kadhim said he spoke with Essam after his arrest, and he called on Iraq’s Interior Ministry to intervene.
Iraq was also working to build a new government, with the National Assembly preparing to hold its second session tomorrow to choose a parliament speaker and two deputies. It was unclear if politicians would name the country’s new president, expected to be Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.
The president will be responsible for nominating a prime minister, likely the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance’s Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Security was tightened today around the already heavily-fortified Green Zone, where the meeting will take place. But insurgents still targeted the area, firing three mortar rounds that slammed into the banks of the Tigris River, just outside the concrete barrier of the Green Zone.
As negotiators haggled over Cabinet posts, debate raged over religion’s place in Iraq’s much-anticipated new government.
Supporters of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi criticised the involvement of the religious authority in politics, while Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the United Iraqi Alliance, defended the role of the clergy.
“As long as we’re alive and as long as Iraq and the believers are there, we will continue to work according to the directions and the advice of the religious authority,” al-Hakim told the US-funded Alhurra TV station, according to a transcript provided by his office.
“The religious authority does not want to intervene in the details. It just gives direction when it thinks it will be beneficial.”
Secular-minded politicians have expressed concern about the influence of religion in the National Assembly, where the United Iraqi Alliance holds 140 of the 275 seats.
In a letter to the Alliance, politicians who ran under an Allawi coalition warned that allowing religion to play a greater role in Iraq’s government could “lead to instability in the relations between political forces in the Iraqi arena.”
Shiite leaders repeatedly have denied they are seeking an Islamic state like that of neighbouring Iran, saying they plan to include Kurdish and Sunni Arabs in the government.
Shiites make up about 60% of Iraq’s 26 million people, while Sunni Arabs account for about 20%. Kurds, who are Muslim but mostly secular, are 15% to 20% of the population.
The top UN envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, said Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani told him during a meeting yesterday in Najaf that the Shiite spiritual leader did not intend to involve himself in any political process, except for expressing his opinion during crises. The Alliance came together under al-Sistani’s guidance.
| Related Stories: |
|
