Four killed in attacks on Iraqi police
Gunmen killed four policemen and wounded at least nine more in separate attacks in Baghdad today. The reputed leader of al Qaida in Iraq said the country’s security forces were as great an enemy as the Americans and brushed aside calls to abandon the insurgency.
The latest attacks occurred one day after two more diplomats from Muslim countries were ambushed in suspected kidnap attempts in Baghdad following the weekend abduction of Egypt’s top envoy in the country.
Bahrain’s chief diplomat here was slightly wounded but the Pakistani ambassador escaped injury. Both their governments said the envoys would leave the country.
In Baghdad, gunmen killed Capt. Hazim Jabbar, a member of the police special commando brigade, in the west of the city, police said. Jabbar had worked as a bodyguard for a consultant to former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, police said.
Three other police, including two commandoes, were killed in separate incidents in another west Baghdad neighbourhood, police said. Nine police, including a brigadier general, were injured in a series attacks throughout the capital, officials said.
Two other police commandoes were killed in separate incidents Wednesday in another west Baghdad neighbourhood, police said. Nine police, including a brigadier general, were injured in a series of attacks throughout the capital, officials said.
Also today, a member of the biggest Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, was killed in an ambush in south Baghdad, police said. An Iraqi civilian who had been “co-operative” with the Americans was shot dead on his way to work north of Baghdad near Tarmiya, police added.
A US soldier was killed yesterday and two were wounded by a roadside bomb north-east of Baghdad, the US military said. One Iraqi soldier died and three were injured when a suicide car bomber struck their checkpoint late yesterday 20 miles south of Kirkuk, Iraqi officials said.
Iraqi security forces have been increasingly targeted by insurgents to shake public confidence in the new government elected in January. That has led to public criticism from some Iraqis who support attacks against Americans and other foreigners but not their fellow citizens.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials have said US representatives have participated in meetings with Sunni insurgents in an effort to help the Iraqi government draw militants into the political process.
“Some say the resistance is divided into two groups – an honourable resistance that fights the non-believer-occupier and a dishonourable resistance that fights Iraqis,” the speaker said. “We announce that the Iraqi army is an army of apostates and mercenaries that has allied itself with the Crusaders and came to destroy Islam and fight Muslims. We will fight it.”
The speaker tacitly acknowledged pressure to abandon the struggle against the Americans and their Iraqi allies, saying he was “saddened and burdened” by people “advising me not to persist in fighting in Iraq.”
He also said the Americans began speaking of negotiations to end the conflict after al Qaida had “humiliated” US forces on the battlefield.
Rumsfeld has insisted the talks with insurgents did not involve negotiations with al-Zarqawi and other suspected terrorists.
In the attacks against diplomats, Bahraini envoy Hassan Malallah al-Ansari was slightly wounded as he drove to work yesterday in the Mansour district. Pakistan’s Ambassador Mohammed Younis Khan escaped injury later yesterday when gunmen in two cars fired on his convoy in a kidnap attack in the same district, security officials said.
Egyptian envoy Ihab al-Sherif was seized on Saturday night. A website statement claimed al Qaida was responsible.
Iraqi officials believe insurgents were hoping to sow a climate of fear and discourage Arab and Islamic countries from strengthening their ties to Iraq’s new government.
A total of 49 countries or entities have some form of diplomatic representation in Iraq, including 18 Arab or non-Arab Muslim countries, according to Iraq’s Foreign Ministry and country websites.
A US senator who criticised President George Bush’s Iraq policy at recent congressional hearings was in Baghdad today for meetings with politicians, officials said.
Sen. Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s senior Democrat, was accompanied by several members of his staff, said US Embassy spokesman Adam Hobson.
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