Insurgents Stage Attacks Across Iraq
By Edward Wong
New York Times
Thursday 01 July 2004
Baghdad - On a day when Saddam Hussein gave a rambling, defiant speech in an arraignment before an Iraqi judge, insurgents staged deadly attacks across the country today, pressing their tenacious efforts to drive out American troops and their allies.
The strikes showed that the insurgency was still robust despite American hopes that the transfer of formal sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on Monday would quiet the rebels.
An American military official said that although guerrillas had not mounted the kind of spectacular car bomb attacks that marked the bloodiest days of the insurgency, the average number of daily attacks, including roadside bombings and assassinations, was still the same as before the handover of limited powers on Monday.
In the northern town of Mosul, patrolled by the Stryker Brigade of the United States Army, a roadside bomb ripped into a military convoy on the southern outskirts of the city, killing an American soldier and wounding two others, the military said. Officials also said that a marine had been killed in western Iraq, possibly around the volatile city of Falluja. They did not provide more details.
At least 855 American soldiers have died since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and nearly 85 percent of those casualties occurred after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003.
Television footage of the Mosul bombing showed American soldiers in battle gear and Iraqi police officers carrying AK-47 assault rifles standing around the wreckage site. Several people loaded a wounded Iraqi man into the back of a Red Crescent ambulance, which then raced off beneath rows of palm trees.
American commanders in some provinces said they had observed a recent increase in the use of roadside bombs, probably because they allow guerrillas to kill soldiers in armored vehicles without having to actually confront the superior firepower of such vehicles in face-to-face combat.
At least one roadside bomb exploded in the capital today, killing three Iraqis in the Khadra neighborhood, near the perilous highway that leads through western Baghdad to the international airport, an Interior Ministry official, Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, said.
Another bomb went off after 8 a.m. and killed Ihsan Karim, the head of the Finance Ministry's audit board, said Col. Abdul-Rahman. The colonel said the explosion did not come from a roadside bomb, but rather from a magnetic device put on the underside of a car in Mr. Karim's convoy. The attack took place in the Yarmouk neighborhood in central Baghdad. Mr. Karim was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died, the relative said.
Two of Mr. Karim's bodyguards were also killed, and two bystanders were wounded.
At 9:30 a.m., firefighters were at the scene of the explosion, along a wide roadway cutting through the neighborhood. They doused the area with a hose. Iraqi police officers and men in plainclothes carrying AK-47's, probably private bodyguards, stood around a silver sedan whose rear and side windows had been shattered and whose passenger-side door bore numerous small indentations. A small, nearby crater marked the spot of the explosion.
Mr. Karim was in his mid-50's and had a family who lived in Amman, the Jordanian capital, a relative of Mr. Karim's said. A daughter who was engaged to be married had recently moved to Amman to be treated for cancer, and Mr. Karim's wife had joined her there. Mr. Karim, who had worked in the Finance Ministry under Saddam Hussein and stayed on during the American occupation, had remained in Baghdad to continue his work.
The assassination was the latest in a string of killings of senior Iraqi officials that have taken place since the slate of the new government was announced on June 1. Insurgents have killed the officials in an obvious attempt to create a climate of fear among those working for the interim Iraqi government. The killings also show that insurgents do not view the government, run by prime minister Iyad Allawi, who was once strongly backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, as a legitimate ruling authority.
The Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is suspected of issuing a recent death threat against Mr. Allawi that mocked the fact that Mr. Allawi had been appointed by the Americans rather than elected by Iraqis.
Early Thursday, the American military launched another airstrike in a residential neighborhood of southwestern Falluja, military officials said. The strike killed at least 4 people and wounded at least 10, a hospital doctor, Loai Ali, told The Associated Press.
Falluja has become a haven for anti-American fighters who follow hard-line Sunni clerics who have imposed Islamic law. Foreign jihadists, loyalists to Mr. Hussein and disaffected young men also roam the streets, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47's. Insurgents groups regularly kidnap and occasionally kill foreign civilians passing through the area.
In the southern holy city of Najaf, militiamen loyal to the firebrand cleric Moktada al-Sadr agreed on Wednesday to trade 16 police officers they had captured this week for two insurgents imprisoned by the government, the police chief, Brig. Gen. Ghalib al-Jazaeri, said. Nine police officers still remain in the hands of the militia, the Mahdi Army. General Jazaeri said some of the officers had been seized from their homes and some captured while on duty.
Mr. Sadr's forces clearly remain defiant of both the Iraqi government and the American military, despite recent gestures made by Mr. Sadr that he wants to get involved in mainstream politics. American commanders have dropped the promise they made in April to kill or capture the cleric. Mr. Sadr is more popular than ever, having emerged as a folk hero during the revolt he led against the occupation.
The Mahdi Army also returned a police car that it had seized with police officers.
General Jazaeri also said that on Wednesday the police arrested a Libyan national, Muhammad Hussein Muhammad al-Turki, who later confessed to coming to Iraq to fight the Americans. The man was carrying documents that showed he had traveled through Egypt and Syria to get to Iraq, General Jazaeri said.
"I am here to help you and to fight the Americans, so how can you arrest me?" Mr. Turki said as he sat handcuffed and blindfolded before General Jazaeri, according to the police chief. "Anyone who cooperates with the Americans is a traitor."
The general said the prisoner was taken to Baghdad for further questioning. In a separate incident, the general added, on Tuesday the Najaf police seized a white BMW loaded with up to 150 pounds of explosives, 200 hand grenades and 12 machine guns.
In the southern city of Basra on Wednesday, Iraqi security forces discovered a car rigged with explosives that officials believe was meant to detonate during a parade attended by the deputy interior minister, Abdul Khider Taha. Police officers disarmed the explosives after finding them inside the car, parked about 300 feet from the Mina Sports Club.
The main suspect is a man in a police uniform - but apparently not a member of the police force - who was seen on videotape taken by a photographer attending the parade, a local intelligence official, Col. Khalaf Zaidan, said.
------- |
