Suicide Bombers Kill 21 People in Iraq
11 minutes ago
World - Reuters
By Sami Jumaili
HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - Suicide bombers killed 21 people in attacks on an Iraqi police academy and a checkpoint on Wednesday, part of a campaign to derail Jan. 30 elections which Iraq (news - web sites)'s prime minister vowed will go ahead.
The first bomber rammed an explosives-packed car into the police academy, killing 15 people in the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, near the lawless area known as the "Triangle of Death," police spokesman Hadi Hatif said.
Hours later, a suicide car bomber killed six people at a checkpoint manned by police and National Guards in the northern city of Baquba, police and hospital sources said.
The attacks were the latest by insurgents who have killed more than 90 people, mostly policemen, this week alone in a campaign targeting the U.S.-backed interim government and its fledgling security services.
They came a day after gunmen assassinated Baghdad's provincial governor, Ali al-Haidri, and a suicide truck bomber killed 11 people outside a police commando headquarters, a surge of violence that drew fresh calls for delaying the ballot.
Insurgents regard security force members, politicians and any Iraqi working with U.S.-led forces as collaborators with a foreign occupier, and have marked them for death.
The violence has raised misgivings about the poll, dividing Iraq's interim government, with some leaders including President Ghazi al-Yawar openly worried about whether a meaningful poll could be held amid escalating violence.
A source in the United States close to the Iraqi government said Prime Minister Iyad Allawi shares Yawar's concerns.
"(They) won't say so publicly because they're afraid of embarrassing (President George W.) Bush," the source told Reuters in Washington.
White House officials said Wednesday Bush spoke with Yawar about the need to push ahead with the polls.
Allawi vowed on Wednesday to proceed with the vote.
"The government is committed to running the elections on schedule," Allawi told a news conference. "We will not allow violence and terrorists to stop the political process... We know some Iraqis fear voting but we have to overcome those fears."
PLAN TO SAFEGUARD VOTE
Allawi insisted he had a plan to safeguard voters but gave few details. Raging violence has shattered any trust in local security forces that hardly seem able to protect themselves.
The U.S. general in charge of Baghdad said up to 35,000 U.S. troops would help guard the poll in the Iraqi capital.
"Every single soldier assigned to taskforce Baghdad will be out or supporting the elections in some way on election day and that will be in excess of 35,000 on that day," Major General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division responsible for security in Baghdad told a news conference.
Up to 230,000 people of Iraqi origin could vote at polling stations across the United States in Iraq's national elections at the end of the month, an official said on Wednesday.
Peter Erben of the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) told a news conference in Geneva another 150,000 may vote in Britain -- the main U.S. ally in the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- and 250,000 in Syria.
In all, up to a million people outside Iraq may be eligible to vote in the poll to elect a transitional national assembly.
Iraq's 60 percent Shi'ite majority, oppressed under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), wants the election to cement its newfound political dominance since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
VIOLENCE IN SUNNI HEARTLAND
Much of the pre-election violence has focused on the restive heartland of Saddam's once-privileged Sunni minority.
The head of Iraqi intelligence, Mohammed Abdallah Shahwani, told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper the number of militants in Iraq was between 20,000 and 30,000.
He said they were found mostly in Sunni Muslim areas where they have the sympathy of people, who "turn a blind eye to militants and don't notify the authorities about them."
He said members of Saddam's former regime were in Syria overseeing the insurgency.
In attacks on Wednesday, a hospital official in Hilla, 100 km (62 miles) from Baghdad, said nine policemen were among the dead and 40 people were wounded in the suicide car bombing.
Earlier in the day, a car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy killed two Iraqi bystanders in western Baghdad. The Army of Ansar al-Sunna group, which mounted the deadliest suicide attack on Americans in Iraq with a bombing at a U.S. base in Mosul last month, claimed responsibility.
Another Iraqi militant group claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Hilla, according to an Internet statement.
"With the help of God, we hit the police academy...on Wednesday afternoon in a successful martyrdom operation," the Islamic Army in Iraq said in a statement posted on a Web site often used by Islamists.
In the western city of Ramadi, five Iraqi civilians were killed when they were caught up in clashes between insurgents and U.S. troops, witnesses said. Fighting erupted after rebels detonated a bomb near a convoy and opened fire. (Additional reporting by Andrew Marshall, Matt Spetalnick, Lutfi Abu-Oun, Michael Georgy and Lin Noueihed) |
