Insurgent Attacks in Iraq Leave 31 Dead
Monday March 7, 2005 3:46 PM
By TODD PITMAN
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Guerrillas launched a series of attacks in Iraq on Monday that left 31 people dead and dozens wounded as the country took its first major step toward forming a government whose most crucial task will be dealing with the insurgency.
Bulgaria said one of its soldiers killed in Iraq on Friday was likely hit by friendly fire from coalition troops. The shooting came on the same day as U.S. troops fired on a car carrying Italian journalist Giulilana Sgrena, wounding her and killing an Italian intelligence officer who negotiated her release from insurgents.
Al-Qaida in Iraq purportedly claimed responsibility in an Internet statement for much of the bloodshed - violence in and around Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where 15 people died. Another car bomb killed 12 people in Balad, southeast of Baqouba.
The Baqouba assaults included a car bomb, three roadside bombs and small arms attacks three checkpoints, one of them just south of Baqouba in Muradiyah, said police Col. Mudhafar al-Jubbori
U.S. Maj. Ed House said a suicide car bombing outside a police station there killed nine people and wounded 17. The dead included the bomber, two police, three soldiers and three civilians.
In another attack near the city, a group of about 20 insurgents in five vehicles attacked an army checkpoint with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, killing five Iraqi soldiers. The troops fought back, killing one of the attackers. Nine people were wounded, House said.
Militants also fired a mortar near the blue-domed governor's office, but no one was hurt, said a spokesman for the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division, Maj. Richard Goldenberg.
Another car bomb exploded outside the home of Iraqi army Lt. Col. Mohammed Abdul Mutaled in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing 12 people and injuring 21 others, said the city's police chief, Ayad Ahmed. Hospital officials said most of the casualties were bystanders. Iraqi security forces are frequently targeted by insurgents.
In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police and wounded a third in a drive-by shooting in the eastern slum of Sadr City, said Dr. Abdul Jabar Solan, director of a hospital where the casualties were brought.
Two civilians were killed when a roadside bomb targeting a joint U.S.-Iraqi military convoy exploded in the west Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah. The blast missed the convoy, damaging two passing cars and wounding four people, including two girls, said 1st Lt. Ali Hussein Hamdani. Another roadside bomb exploded in a southeastern Baghdad suburb, wounding several people on a bus.
Meanwhile, saboteurs blasted a pipeline near Samarra, 60 miles northwest of the capital, that carries oil to a Baghdad refinery, said police Maj. Mohsin Mahmoud.
A Polish soldier was wounded in the hand Monday when a bomb blew up next to his convoy north of Hillah in central Iraqi, said Lt. Col. Zbigniew Staszkow, spokesman for the Polish military.
The death Friday of Bulgarian Pvt. Gardi Gardev was likely caused by friendly fire from troops of the U.S.-led coalition, according to Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov in Sofia.
Svinarov said Gardev was in a Bulgarian patrol that was approached by a civilian Iraqi car. The vehicle did not stop after the patrol gave a signal, and the servicemen fired warning shots in the air from the north. Shortly after that, the patrol came under ``massive fire from the west,'' where a U.S. Army communications site was located about 150 yards away, Svinarov said.
A U.S. military spokesman, Tech. Sgt. Patrick Murphy, said the commanding general in the region had appointed a commission to investigate.
In the latest in a wave of abductions, a Jordanian businessman was kidnapped in Iraq by captors demanding $250,000 in ransom, Jordan's Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
More than 190 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq in the past year. At least 13 remain in the hands of their captors and more than 30 were killed. The rest were freed, some through the payment of ransom, or escaped.
Monday's violence came a day after politicians set March 16 for opening Iraq's first democratically elected parliament in modern history as a deal hardened Sunday to name Jalal Talabani, a leader of the minority Kurds, to the presidency. The day marks the anniversary of the 1988 Saddam-ordered chemical attack on the northern Kurdish town of Halabja, which killed 5,000 people.
The more powerful prime minister's job will go to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a deeply conservative Shiite who leads the Islamic Dawa Party. His nomination, which the Kurds have agreed to, has been endorsed by the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
``This was one of our firm demands and we agreed on it previously. The agreement states that Jalal Talabani takes the presidential post and one of the United Iraqi Alliance members takes the prime minister's post,'' Talabani spokesman Azad Jundiyan told The Associated Press.
He said the clergy-backed alliance also reached a preliminary agreement with the Kurds on their other conditions - including extending their territories to include Kirkuk.
Jundiyan said they wanted the deal on paper before going though with it. Alliance officials, including Ahmad Chalabi, said those negotiations were not over.
Al-Jaafari and the alliance agreed on Talabani's presidency during a March 3 meeting with Kurdish leaders in northern Irbil. Kurds had long wanted the job for Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
The alliance, which won 140 seats in the assembly, needs the 75 seats held by a Kurdish coalition to gain the two-thirds majority needed to elect a president and two vice presidents, the first step toward setting up a government.
Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who controls 40 seats in the assembly, also has been negotiating to keep his job.
Officials have said the post of speaker probably would go to a Sunni Arab - either interim President Ghazi al-Yawer or interim Minister of Industry Hajim al-Hassani.
A Sunni Arab speaker would go far toward appeasing the minority, which is believed to make up the core of the insurgency and, like the Kurds, represents 15 percent to 20 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people. But unlike the Kurds, Sunni Arabs largely stayed away from the election to protest the U.S. presence in the country.
Kurdish demands include an autonomous Kurdistan as part of federal Iraq and a share of oil revenues. They also want to maintain their peshmerga militia and want a bigger share of the national budget.
Their demand for a federal state, though, would require redrawing the Kurds' current autonomous state borders to include Kurdish areas - oil-rich Kirkuk among them - that were dominated by Saddam loyalists and Sunni Arabs.
Chalabi, whose own party is part of the alliance, said no deal had yet been made with the Kurds - especially concerning Kirkuk.
``There are no obstacles at all, there are friendly negotiations with the Kurds because we have been allies for a long time and have common understandings,'' Chalabi told Al-Jazeera television. ``There are two authorized committees, one represents the United Iraqi Alliance and the second represents the Kurds, that are negotiating over these issues in Baghdad.'' |
