Iraq Ushers in New Year with Deadly Attacks
Sat Jan 1, 1:50 PM ET Top Stories - Reuters
By Matt Spetalnick
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites) ushered in the New Year on Saturday the same way it ended the last one -- with a string of assassinations and bombings by insurgents bent on wrecking a landmark Jan. 30 election.
Militants led by Jordanian Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al- Zarqawi released a video of five captured Iraqi security men being executed in the street, part of a bloody campaign of intimidation aimed at scaring voters way from the polls.
A statement posted on an Islamist Web site along with the video vowed that the group would "slaughter" other Iraqis it brands collaborators for working with American-led occupation forces and the country's U.S.-backed government.
Signaling no let-up in attacks as the new year dawned, insurgents assassinated two local government officials for Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and an Iraqi police major outside his home in the southwest part of the capital.
Iraqi police also found two beheaded bodies in western Baghdad along with a note that said they were truck drivers killed because they were working with the U.S. military.
Three roadside bombs exploded in the capital early on Saturday, with one blast killing an Iraqi trucker hauling loads for foreign contractors.
In the video from Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq, masked militants were shown lining up five captive National Guardsmen, their hands bound behind their backs, and then shooting them from behind.
People were seen passing by during the shooting and some even stopped to watch.
"To the families of civil defense forces, the National Guard and the police we tell you to say your final goodbyes to your sons before you send them to us. Our reward to your sons is slaughter," a masked militant said in a statement.
Five men in civilian clothes were found shot dead in Ramadi, capital of restive Anbar province, earlier this week. A note said they were security men killed by guerrilla fighters.
On the video, one of the captured men who identified himself as Lieutenant Bashar Latif Jasem said his duty was to fight "terrorists entering Iraq."
When the shooting begins, the men fall to the ground but gunmen keep pumping bullets into them.
"These apostates are ... allies with (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi's apostate government and support the American enemy," said the statement read on the tape.
"They are attacking Muslim homes in Ramadi under the pretext of preventing terrorists from entering Iraq. Anyone who follows them will face the same fate."
ZARQAWI TOPS U.S. WANTED LIST
Zarqawi's group has claimed most of the bloodiest suicide attacks in Iraq since the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and has also beheaded several foreign hostages.
It has spearheaded a campaign of assassinations, bombings and ambushes against members of Iraq's new security forces, raising questions of how they will protect voters at the polls when they can hardly protect themselves.
Allawi told Iraqis in a live New Year's Eve phone-in on state television that his government would still do all it could to ensure voters' safety.
The reinforced U.S. army of 150,000 and other allied troops would be on hand, along with the new Iraqi security services, he said. Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other Islamist groups have this week pledged to wreck the vote as part of a holy war in Iraq.
"Iraq will be solid and strong in its political and social system, a united Iraq in a stable and secure region," Allawi said later in New Year message to the nation as the familiar sound of occasional mortar fire echoed over central Baghdad.
Violence in the Sunni north and west may keep many in Saddam's once-dominant Sunni minority away from the polls, causing complaints among their leaders that the new assembly may give exaggerated power to the Shi'ite majority -- an outcome that would complicate Washington's plans for ensuring stability.
An audiotape purported to be from bin Laden earlier this week endorsed Zarqawi as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. The U.S. military has branded him their number one enemy in Iraq and has offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
Nearly two dozen troopers from the Iraqi National Guard may have been abducted by insurgents in the west of the country, according to an account by a Guard officer Monday.
Also Saturday, an unidentified sniper shot dead a Lebanese national inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and the U.S. and British embassies, Lebanon's foreign ministry said. It said in a statement the 24-year-old worked for a Kuwaiti company.
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