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Insurgent attacks kill 26 in Baghdad
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-06 09:54
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqis seeking jobs with security forces were targeted once
again Thursday when a suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his body
mingled among hundreds of men and blew himself up in one of four attacks that
killed 26 people.
The attacks are part of a surge of violence that has killed more than 200
since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his new government last week
with seven positions still undecided.
Many recruitment centers, to prevent car bombings, have been turned into
small fortresses surrounded by concrete blast walls and razor wire. But
militants are striking back with an old weapon: the suicide bomber belt.
The Cabinet held its first meeting Thursday. Al-Jaafari aide Laith Kuba said
the seven vacancies, including the key oil and defense ministries, would be
filled by Saturday and parliament would be asked to vote on them Sunday.
In the deadliest attack, police said an insurgent blew himself up outside an
army recruitment office a half mile from Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone,
home to government offices, foreign embassies and U.S. forces.
At al-Yarmouk Hospital, the morgue was overflowing with mangled bodies after
the blast. One man lay screaming on his bed — both his legs had been blown off.
Pools of blood covered the floor.
"While we were standing in line, a man walked ... right up to the heavily
guarded entrance gate, as if he wanted to ask the guards a question," said Anwar
Wasfi, who was injured on his leg and arms. "Suddenly an explosion occurred, and
I was knocked over. I passed out and opened my eyes wounded in the hospital"
At least 13 people were killed and 20 wounded in the blast, Lt. Salam Wahab
said at the recruitment center.
A similar attack Wednesday, in which a suicide bomber blew himself up in a
line of police recruits in the northern city of Irbil, killed 60 Iraqis and
wounded 150.
Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said
there has been an escalation in the use of suicide belts since security was
stepped up around recruitment centers and other insurgent targets. Recent raids
in and around Baghdad uncovered some assembled car bombs, he said, and foiled
many attacks.
"But it is rather difficult to find out about an explosive belt put on by a
person," Rahman said.
On Jan. 30, Iraqis voted in historic parliamentary elections and private cars
were banned from the streets; there were nine attacks that day by bombers who
had explosives strapped to their bodies.
Insurgents often target Iraqi security forces, which are being recruited and
trained by the U.S.-led coalition as part of its exit strategy in Iraq. An
estimated 1,800 Iraqi soldiers and police officers were killed between June 2004
and April 27 this year, the latest date for which statistics were available,
according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
At least nine policemen were killed in two attacks in western Baghdad on
Thursday.
In the first attack, gunmen fired on a patrol in the Amil area, killing eight
policemen and wounding two, police Maj. Mousa Abdul Karim said. About 15 minutes
later, a suicide car bomb exploded near a police patrol in nearby Ghazaliyah,
killing one officer and wounding six, according to Karim and a U.S. military
spokeswoman, Sgt. 1st Class Danette Rodesky-Flores.
Another suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad's
southern Doura neighborhood, destroying a large truck but causing no American
casualties, Rodesky-Flores said.
Elsewhere, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol in Mosul, 225 miles
northwest of Baghdad, killing four policemen and wounding five, police and the
U.S. military said.
Al-Jaafari had hoped to lure support away from the insurgency by including in
his Cabinet members of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which dominated
under Saddam Hussein. But members of his Shiite-dominated alliance have blocked
candidates with links to Saddam's regime, which brutally repressed Shiites and
Kurds.
While most of his 37-member Cabinet was sworn in Tuesday, bickering continues
over the seven undecided posts.
Lawmakers from al-Jaafari's United Iraqi Alliance said agreement has been
reached on who would fill the oil and electricity ministries, which are destined
for Shiites.
Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, oil minister in the former U.S.-appointed Governing
Council, will return to the position, said Ali al-Dabagh, a Shiite lawmaker
involved in the talks. Mihsin Shlash, an independent Shiite lawmaker, will be
electricity minister, al-Dabagh and two other lawmakers said.
Al-Jaafari's aide, Kuba, confirmed the posts had been filled, but declined to
discuss names.
The U.S. military also said its forces searched a hospital in Ramadi, 70
miles west of Baghdad, last week for suspected terrorists after receiving a tip,
but none was found.
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said there was no evidence that Iraq's most wanted militant,
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was ever at the hospital, and the raid was not based on
information that he was there.
Conway said the military has been unable to confirm reports that al-Zarqawi
was wounded in a firefight or was otherwise injured or sick.
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