Bomb kills at least 13 civilians in Baghdad

Two were killed and another wounded in an eastern section of Baghdad today during combat operations, the military said.

Three others were killed and two injured on patrol yesterday in Al Mashtal, a predominantly Shiite neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad.

The military said they died after their Humvee was hit with an explosively formed penetrator, a type of bomb that the US says Iran has been supplying to Shiite militias – a charge the Iranians deny.

AP Television News footage from the incident showed the twisted wreckage of the Humvee, burning wildly as soldiers hosed it down with water.

Last week, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered a six-month suspension of operations by his Mahdi Army militia. US officials believe mainstream Mahdi forces have generally stuck by the order but breakaway factions of the militia are continuing attacks.

Another soldier was killed and two more injured during combat operations yesterday in the west of the capital, the US command said.

In the north, a suicide truck bomb exploded at a police checkpoint in Mosul, killing one policeman and wounding 2 others, and also injuring 24 civilians, police Brig. Saeed Ahmed al-Jubouri said.

Elsewhere, in a goodwill gesture for Sunni Arabs ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, some 200 prisoners were released in the city of Fallujah.

Meanwhile, embattled Prime Minister Nouri Maliki met behind closed-doors with Iraq’s top Shiite cleric in Najaf to brief him over efforts to fill Cabinet jobs vacated when ministers from the largest Sunni Arab bloc and al-Sadr’s movement pulled out to protest the prime minister’s policies.

After the morning bombing, just before 8am in the neighbourhood of Baladiyat, blood stained the ground around a small crater caused by the explosion.

APTN video showed the scene strewn with broken glass and littered with people’s shoes and other items.

A medic at a nearby hospital said 13 were killed in the blast and 25 were injured, while police put the toll at 15 killed and 23 injured.

“We heard a big explosion and I saw many people get injured – I was one of them,” a man who identified himself only as Amjed told APTN from his hospital bed, his right shoulder bandaged and left arm in a sling.

He said he had ventured out early in order to try and find work to support his family.

“We’re poor people, we’re already suffering enough from the hardships of life and now this,” he said. “I’m fed up with those who plant bombs and target people.”

It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but the blast came on the fringes of Sadr City, al-Sadr’s stronghold. Al-Sadr last week declared a six-month “freeze” on his Mahdi Army militia’s operations but warned he could reactivate it at any time if he thought necessary.

The announcement came after clashes in the Shiite city of Karbala between Mahdi Army forces and a rival Shiite militia.

In a pre-dawn raid in Karbala this morning, US forces captured an Iraqi believed to be working as the local contact to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’s elite Quds Force to supply Shiite militias with Iranian-made weapons, said US Army Maj. Winfield Danielson III.

The suspect is also believed to have helped transport Iraqis to Iran for “terrorist training,” Danielson said in an e-mail. The military said it is believed that he is “closely linked to individuals at the highest levels” of the Quds Force.

US forces were led to the suspect, whose name was not released, by information from prisoners, Danielson said.

Ground troops confiscated computer equipment, communication devices, miscellaneous documents and photographs, the military said.

Following Maliki’s meeting in Najaf, 45 miles south-east of Karbala, with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the premier told reporters there were “issues which I always find necessary to hear his views on.”

In addition to filling the Cabinet posts, Maliki said he also discussed the possibility of forming a new government altogether or putting together one made up of non-partisan technocrats – though emphasised it was currently only an “idea” that was being considered among others.

He did not give a time frame for making a decision. But Maliki made it clear his government cannot go on indefinitely with an incomplete team of ministers, as has been the case since six Sadrist ministers quit in April over his failure to announce a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops in Iraq. The Sunni Arab ministers withdrew in August.

“We are still trying to persuade the (Sunni Arab) brothers to return to their ministries but it seems that they are not likely to do so,” he told reporters. “This, naturally, means the ministries cannot be left vacant.”

Al-Sistani, who rarely leaves his Najaf home, did not speak to the reporters gathered outside his home on a small alley near the shrine of Imam Ali, Shiite’s most revered saint and a cousin of Prophet Muhammad.

Maliki also said he was considering declaring Iraq’s shrine cities “safe havens” where only the army would be allowed to carry arms. He said the proposal was inspired by the fighting last week in the holy city of Karbala where the clashes between the two rival Shiite militias left at least 50 people dead.

“It’s an idea that will spare us potential problems,” he said, adding that the proposal would cover cities that house all religious shrines regardless of sect.

Elsewhere, officials in Sulaimaniyah announced that they had indefinitely postponed the start of the school year for primary and secondary schools in an effort to prevent the further spread of cholera in the northern province.

Since the disease broke out in mid-August nine people have died and some 70 others have been confirmed with cholera. Another 4,000 are suffering from symptoms like severe diarrhoea and vomiting.

Cholera is a gastrointestinal disease that is typically spread by drinking contaminated water and can cause severe diarrhoea. In extreme cases, that can cause fatal dehydration. In this case, US military medical officials have said the area water does not seem to be contaminated and it is not yet certain how it is being spread.

Schools, which were due to open Sept. 15, will be kept closed until the outbreak is under control, said Hussein Sheikh Mustafa, the provinces educational director.

“This measure is to protect the pupils,” he said in a report in the al-Mashriq newspaper.