A wave of violence has engulfed Iraq with bombs killing at least 60 Iraqis and six US soldiers in a wave of attacks following the formation of a new government after three months of wrangling.
The streets of Baghdad were largely empty yesterday morning after 17 bombs had exploded across Iraq the previous day. The attacks show there is apparently no end to the number of suicide bombers willing to die in Iraq.
The six American soldiers were killed, and two others wounded, by roadside bombs, the US military said yesterday.
Their deaths bring the total for US soldiers killed this month to 48. Four of the dead were killed by a roadside bomb near Tal Afar, an insurgent stronghold west of Mosul.
Two other soldiers died in Baghdad. Some 1,579 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the invasion two years ago.
The suicide bombers are mostly pious young non-Iraqis, seeking martyrdom fighting the infidel in Iraq.
Many come from Sunni Arab countries such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Yemen.
Their victims are frequently Iraqi police or civilians caught by the blast. The suicide bombers have less success against the US military, who suffer most of their losses from powerful bombs planted beside the road and detonated by a control wire or a remote control device adapted from a car door opener or a children's toy.
Attacks in Baghdad yesterday killed at least 10 people and wounded a further 32, said officials, on top of the 50 who died on Friday.
A suicide car bomb exploded yesterday near the offices of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 Sunni Arab factions, who have been negotiating a stake in the new government which is dominated by Shia Muslims and Kurds. Two civilians were killed and 18 wounded.
The insurgent factions responsible totally reject participation in the administration. The suicide bomb attacks show that, although the Iraqi security forces claim to be making progress in breaking up insurgent cells, these can still launch co-ordinated assaults in different parts of Iraq.
There were explosions not only in and around Baghdad but in the far south near Basra and in the north in Arbil, a Kurdish city, where a bomb disposal expert was killed.
"It is very difficult to stop suicide bombers because they don't care if they die," Karim Sinjari, the Interior Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said in Arbil before the attack on Friday.
Mr Sinjari confirmed that most of the suicide bombers are foreign but added that they could not operate without an infrastructure organised by Iraqis.
Iraq, the secret US visit, and an angry military chief
The legality of the Iraq war exploded on to the agenda last week, causing chaos to Labour strategy. Here we reveal the key US officials who persuaded Britain that invasion was legal - and the astonishing reaction from our military chiefs
For Karen and Glyn Horner, it is a wedding day they are unlikely to forget. The newlyweds' reception in a quiet Northamptonshire country hotel on Friday was just under way when a sleek blue helicopter touched down on the lawn, disgorging the Prime Minister and his entourage for an election campaign pit stop. It is not every bride whose album contains a photograph of the happy couple posing with Tony Blair.
Article continues The newlyweds will be honeymooning in the Maldives on polling day - perhaps just as well, since one guest confides the family are Conservatives.
It was a surreal end to Blair's darkest week. Four days to go. Four days for Labour to hold on to its faltering lead before the public's chance to vote.
Blair may have thought that he could take Labour through the campaign without tripping over Iraq. He was wrong. Iraq came back to bite the Prime Minister last week. Viciously. Conservative billboards branded him a liar in letters a foot high. Headlines took up the theme. The Prime Minister was accused of 'stomach-turning' behaviour by a defecting backbencher.
The process by which Blair took a nation to war, the Achilles' heel of his eight-year premiership, has stumbled blinking into the spotlight, with the unprecedented leaking of the 13 pages of densely argued, highly classified legal advice that his government has fought to keep secret for two years.
It is both far better and far worse than it looks. The document fails to prove the Opposition's central charge, that Blair lied about the legality of the invasion: its emergence at the height of an already vitriolic campaign raises serious questions about precisely who is trying to destroy him.
On the other hand, it enables for the first time the tangled threads of argument that led London and Washington to a still fiercely disputed war to be unravelled in public. In a series of interviews with key players on both sides of the Atlantic, The Observer can for the first time reveal the remarkable Washington summit attended by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, with leading legal officers in the Bush administration. Goldsmith came back more 'persuaded' that the case for war was 'reasonable'.
The anger and fear over lack of legal cover can also be shown, with some of Britain's most senior military staff still concerned, more than two years later, that an appearance before the International Criminal Court is possible.
The path by which Blair's government travelled from doubt, confusion and ethical struggle to the bombing of Baghdad is now clear as never before: the ramifications may yet be felt all the way to the ballot box, and perhaps beyond it to the courts. There are 96 hours to go before polling day and each of the party leaders will be fighting every last minute. Blair, nervous as he watches his poll lead drift; Michael Howard, hopeful that he can do enough to stave off another Tory disaster; Charles Kennedy, eyeing a Liberal Democrat breakthrough. Against the background rumble of Iraq, the election campaign is now, finally, entering the home straight.
The US connection
On the sixth floor of the State Department in Foggy Bottom sits the recently vacated office of William Taft IV. Despite the peculiarity of his name, few in Britain will have heard of him or his distinguished Republican pedigree.
Yet The Observer can reveal that this great-grandson of a former Republican president played a critical role in persuading Goldsmith's that the war against Iraq was legal. Taft was one of five powerful lawyers in the Bush administration who met the Attorney General in Washington in February 2003 to push their view that a second UN resolution was superfluous.
Goldsmith, who had been expressing doubts about the legality of any proposed war, was sent to Washington by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to 'put some steel in his spine', as one official has said.
On 11 February, Goldsmith met Taft, a former US ambassador to Nato who was then chief legal adviser to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. After a gruelling 90-minute meeting in Taft's conference room 6419, Goldsmith then met the US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, followed by a formidable triumvirate including Judge Al Gonzales, Bush's chief lawyer at the White House.
Goldsmith also met William 'Jim' Haynes, who is Defence Secretary's Donald Rumsfeld's chief legal adviser, and John Bellinger, legal adviser to Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Adviser. This group of lawyers is as renowned for fearsome intellect as it is for hard-line conservative politics. Bellinger is alleged to have said: 'We had trouble with your Attorney; we got there eventually.' From copies of Goldsmith's legal advice to the Prime Minister published last week, it is clear that these meetings had a pivotal role in shaping Goldsmith's view that there was a 'reasonable case' for war.
Goldsmith states: 'Having regard to the information on the negotiating history which I have been given and to the arguments of the US Administration which I heard in Washington, I accept that a reasonable case can be made that Resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorisation in 678 [which approved of military force in the first Gulf war] without a further resolution.'
In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Taft has for the first time disclosed details of Goldsmith's mysterious visit to the US capital. Up until now, the British government has been reluctant to give any details of his meeting with the powerful network of lawyers in Bush's inner sanctum who helped persuade him that a second UN resolution was not necessary.
Taft reveals the role Straw played in fixing up these meetings and how pleased the US lawyers were when they heard Goldsmith's final 'unequivocal' advice delivered to Parliament on the eve of invasion.
Taft, a former deputy defence secretary under President Ronald Reagan, was the man to do that. He had been credited with masterminding the doctrine of 'pre-emption', which argues that a state can take military action to deter an attack. Crucially, Taft was also personally responsible in 2002 for drawing up 1441, which called on Saddam fully to comply with demands to disarm or face 'serious consequences'.
Speaking from his country home in Lorton, Virginia, Taft explains how Straw set up Goldsmith's visit. 'It was something that grew out of a series of conversations between Secretary Powell and Secretary of State Straw,' said Taft. 'The question was: in particular circumstances - namely the failure of Iraq to comply with resolution 1441 - would the use of force be authorised in the absence of a further decision by the Security Council? We had reached the conclusion that, while a second resolution would be desirable, it was not necessary.
'As a legal matter, 1441 had been drafted in such a way that the Security Council was required to meet and discuss the subject in the absence of Iraq's compliance, but no further decision was needed. Secretary Powell had shared that conclusion with Mr Straw and Mr Straw said his lawyers were looking at this, the Attorney General in particular, and asked, could he meet Secretary Powell's lawyers? Because of that, Lord Goldsmith arranged to talk to us about our views.'
Taft, who has since left the State Department to resume work in the private sector, said: 'Lord Goldsmith met with me and one or or two others in the State Department most of the morning. He then met with our Attorney General, and met with people at the Pentagon - Jim Haynes, and Judge Gonzales and John Bellinger.'
To human rights groups and many international lawyers, this roll-call of Republican lawyers will ring alarm bells. Gonzales, the 49-year-old son of immigrants from Texas, has been at the heart of controversy over detainees in Guantanámo Bay and prisoner abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib.
After a political battle in Washington, Bush appointed Gonzales US Attorney General earlier this year, despite leaks of memos from him that appeared to authorise the use of torture on 'enemy combatants' not categorised as prisoners of war. Critics say his interpretation of guidelines on torture paved the way for human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib.
He was criticised after writing a memo to the President in which he said the war against terrorism was a 'new kind of war' that renders obsolete the Geneva Conventions' strict limitations on questioning enemy prisoners and renders 'quaint' some of its provisions.
Haynes, another Texan, was appointed to the top legal job in the Pentagon in May 2001 and has been a controversial architect of Bush's 'war on terror' under the wing of Rumsfeld. Like Gonzales, he has been embroiled in the Abu Ghraib scandal. His nomination as a federal judge last year led to a 35,000-name petition being sent to the White House demanding the withdrawal of his name.
Philippe Sands QC, an international lawyer whose book Lawless World re-ignited the row over the Attorney General's legal advice said: 'How delightful that a Labour government should seek assistance from US lawyers so closely associated with neo-con efforts to destroy the international legal order.'
Taft denies that any undue pressure was put on Goldsmith or that the British Attorney General expressed grave doubts about the legality of any war. He said: 'We all told him what our views were in the same way ... although he didn't indicate at the time what his own conclusion would be. Our discussions were very straight up and he was looking to understand our argument.'
Laughing he added: 'I will say that, when we heard his statement in Parliament, which was the next thing we heard about, what he said sounded very familiar.'
The visit to Washington proved to be vital for providing a case for war that side-stepped the need for a second UN resolution: the so-called 'revival argument'. This relied on linking three UN resolutions: 678, which authorised the use of force in removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1990; 687, which set the ceasefire conditions at the end of the war in 1991, including the dismantling of weapons of mass destruction; and 1441, which threatened 'serious consequences' if those conditions were breached.
In his 7 March legal advice, Lord Goldsmith makes it clear that some British law officers believed that it was up to the Security Council, not individual states, to decide if Iraq was in breach of its obligations.
But Goldsmith discloses that he had fully taken on board the arguments made to him during his visit to Washington: 'The US have a rather different view: they maintain that the fact of whether Iraq is in breach is a matter of objective fact, which may therefore be assessed by individual member states. I am not aware of any other state which supports this view.'
The advice clarifies a second vital point: that the American legal advisers who drew up 1441 were convinced that it contained, in itself, the authorisation to use force against Saddam if he could be shown to have failed to disarm.
Goldsmith refers specifically to his meetings with the neo-cons and the effect the arguments that Taft and others had on him: 'I was impressed by the strength and sincerity of the views of the US administration which I heard in Washington on this point.'
Taft remains adamant that 1441 gave the US and Britain a legitimate trigger for the use of force. 'We were drafting the resolution having in mind that we might not get another one and we wanted, in the event of non-compliance [by Iraq], to allow our policy-makers to be in a position to do what they needed to do,' he said. 'There was an enormous fight. A draft resolution was tabled stating that the Security Council would have to take further action and this was not accepted.'
Taft is convinced that Goldsmith's final advice to Blair was correct under international law. 'I am still right there. The use of force was entirely lawful and authorised by the Security Council.'
THhe anger of defence officials
By the end of February 2003, more than 50,000 British troops had been sent to northern Kuwait preparing for an assault on Iraq if the order was given.
While the military strategy was going according to plan, back in the Ministry of Defence HQ, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the then Chief of Defence Staff, was growing increasingly impatient. Aware of the political debate raging on the legality of the war, he told the Prime Minister he would need 'black and white' legal cover before he ordered the troops in.
As The Observer revealed last March, it was Boyce's fears that soldiers might face prosecution for war crimes before the International Criminal Court that led to his demands for an 'unequivocal' two-line note from the Attorney General giving him the green light.
Boyce's clear demand for this unambiguous statement was transmitted to Goldsmith through the Prime Minister. Boyce's stance has emerged as a key factor in pushing Goldsmith to reconsider his final advice, which was presented to the Cabinet on 17 March and which removed many of his caveats in the 7 March document.
In an interview with The Observer, Boyce said: 'My requirement for legal "top cover" didn't start on 7 March; it started from the time we were getting troops in the area at the back end of February. It was obvious already there was quite a heavy debate going on that lent an air of uncertainty to our troops.
'My concern was that the troops should feel absolutely confident that what they were doing was absolutely black and white legally. So, well before 7 March, I made it clear to the Prime Minister that before we went in we would require legal top cover.'
Boyce said he never saw Goldsmith's 13-page full legal opinion of 7 March. 'I didn't see it ... it was not copied to me. My concerns weren't aroused or sparked by that, but by general concern.
'What the Attorney General didn't say was that it was illegal. It had caveats in it ... and some time between producing that piece of work on 7 March and his ultimate instruction or advice to Cabinet and Parliament and to me ... whatever things that were required to remove the caveats or to consider them to be not so important, I am not privy to. At the end of the day, he provided me with the unequivocal black-and-white advice that it was legal for us to go in.'
Yet in a remarkable admission, when asked if he believed he had finally received the necessary legal cover to protect him from a prosecution before the ICC, Boyce replies: ' No - I think I have done as best I can do. I have always been troubled by the ICC. Although I was reassured at the time when it [the decision to sign up to the ICC] was going through Whitehall about five years ago, I was patted on the head and told, don't worry: on the day it will be fine. I don't have 100 percent confidence in that.'
Goldsmith himself warned explicitly of the danger in his 7 March advice that such an attempted prosecution was a possibility. He stated: 'We cannot absolutely rule out that some state strongly opposed to military action might try to bring such a case. It is also possible that CND may try to bring further action to stop military action in the domestic courts. Two further possibilities are an attempted prosecution for murder on the grounds that the military action is unlawful and an attempted prosecution for the crime of aggression.'
Boyce reveals for the first time that part of his motive for insisting on legal assurance was to ensure that, should he or his soldiers face prosecution for the war, then his political masters would also be called to account. He said: 'My concerns were that, if my soldiers went to jail and I did, some other people would go with me - and that's what I had. I had a perfectly unambiguous black-and-white statement saying it would be legal to operate if we had to.'
Asked whether he meant by 'other people' Lord Goldsmith and Tony Blair he replied: 'Too bloody right!'
'I wanted to make sure we had this anchor that has been signed by the government law officer to show that at least we were operating under legal advice. It may not stop us from being charged, but, by God, it would make sure other people were brought in the frame as well.'
Blair's dark week
For nearly five million Britons, polling day came early this year. The ballot boxes may not open until 5 May, but the postal votes on which many of Labour's most marginal seats will be decided began dropping on to doormats last weekend. And somebody was ready for them.
Beneath the headline 'The proof Blair was told war could be illegal', last week's Mail on Sunday detailed the long-suspected, but never before confirmed, reservations and caveats of the Attorney General. The paper did not have the document itself, but had been read out enough authentic detail for Goldsmith to issue a statement admitting it was genuine.The Government's best kept secret was out - just as postal voters' pens were poised over their ballot papers.
Straw was hauled on to the Today programme on Monday for what one colleague called a 'painful' performance defending the legality of the war. For Straw personally, already struggling with an angry Muslim vote in his Blackburn constituency, it was the worst possible time to be thrust into an argument over Iraq.
The week stumbled from bad to worse. On Tuesday, it was announced that Brian Sedgemore, a veteran Labour MP, was defecting to the Lib Dems. The result was Tuesday's damning headlines, with Sedgemore accusing Blair of 'stomach-turning lies' over the war. It was the final encouragement Tory leader Michael Howard's team needed: the next morning, they launched their own poster accusing Blair of lying to go to war, and asking what else he might lie about to get re-elected.
Blair was in the middle of an interview for Sky on Wednesday, insisting he did not tell lies, when Channel 4 News began reporting an altogether more interesting story. It was another leak of the war advice: crucially, this time it and the Guardian had a copy of Goldsmith's summary - albeit handwritten to disguise the source. The crucial part of the document the government had fought for two years to conceal was now posted on a newspaper website for all to see.
Labour ministers are unanimous in blaming the Tories for having somehow orchestrated the first leak, even though Tory aides insist that is 'pure paranoia'.
It was the second hit that really lit the fuse. The Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, watching the news at home, shot to her computer to download the document she had never been shown - despite being in the cabinet. By the following morning, John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, was being chased from a press conference by a reporter brandishing a copy of the advice and shouting: 'Do you want this? You haven't read it.'
The farce overshadowed the unfortunate fact that the full 13-page legal advice did not prove Howard's central charge. Admittedly, Goldsmith's conclusion, in paragraph 28, that 'a reasonable case can be made' for war without a second UN resolution was well short of a ringing endorsement, but neither did he say the war was unlawful. Blair had not lied when he said the Attorney General had ruled the war legal in the end - although he had omitted to mention that the definitive verdict was certainly not there as late as 7 March.
By the time Blair took the podium in the basement of the financial wire service Bloombergs' City office on Thursday morning, ostensibly to launch the party's business manifesto, it was clear there would be few questions about corporation tax. Blair angrily dismissed the leaked document as a 'damp squib': asked why, in that case, it shouldn't be published in full, he startled the audience by announcing it might as well since 'you have probably got it all anyway'.
But the crucial intervention came not from Blair, but from the man beside him. Asked if he, too, would have gone to war in Blair's position, Gordon Brown responded with a succinct: 'Yes.' The spontaneous applause came not from the bemused audience of businessmen, but from relieved Labour aides. Brown had passed up a golden chance to make personal capital out of the war - even though he could hardly have done otherwise in public. Hewitt, sharing the platform, could not resist exclaiming: 'Well done.'
Help also came from an unexpected source. At his morning press conference, Howard was asked whether - given the same legal advice - he, too, would have invaded, he confirmed he would. The logic of his position was crumbling.
On Thursday night, as the three leaders submitted to the David Dimbleby treatment on Question Time , Howard went still further, confirming he would have gone to war knowing there was no WMD. Saddam was still a threat, he said, and he favoured 'regime change-plus' - words anti-war voters love to hate.
When Howard asked the Question Time audience how many people thought Blair had told the truth on Iraq, few hands shot up. And yet his decision to 'go negative' on Blair's character now looks like an own goal: a Populus poll yesterday showed that almost half of voters were less likely to vote Tory as a result. Whatever people think of Blair, they apparently don't want to hear it from Howard.
The danger for Labour, however, comes not just from Howard. Charles Kennedy's stance on Iraq already puts him in pole position for anti-war votes: his mission now is to vacuum up floating voters, particularly women, who hate not the war, but the playground shrillness of debate about it.
His trick of hovering statesmanlike over the fray - Kennedy has criticised both Howard's choice of language and Blair's angry dismissal of the legal advice as a 'damp squib' - may be trickier to maintain given his own party's latest election broadcast, which caricatures the Prime Minister as the boy who cried wolf over WMD. But in about half a dozen seats, such as Islington South or Hornsey and Wood Green in London, Labour strategists admit that the furore over the legal advice could be enough to swing them Kennedy's way.
No wonder one minister, in a seat way down the Tories' hit list, is now writing two speeches for election night, one for winning and one for losing: 'It's undoubtedly close. Iraq, Blair and council tax are the three issues that keep coming up, and the answers I'm giving are not the sort that people want to hear.'
Others on the front line, however, insist that minds are already made up about the war, legal advice or no legal advice. 'If people are going to [vote against me] on the war, they tend to have been very definite from the start,' says one experienced Labour MP fighting a stiff Lib Dem challenge. 'They have had a couple of years to think about it, after all.'
There is, of course, an incentive for Labour to exaggerate the danger: if the election looks 'in the bag', as Alastair Campbell did not quite say last week, reluctant supporters will not bother to vote. A growing number of ministers are now arguing for an extended diet of humble pie, even if Labour is returned with a healthy majority. There must, they argue, be no triumphalism, and not just over Iraq: too many voters are angry and disillusioned about issues ranging from public services to immigration.
'If we get back with a reduced majority, we cannot have a scintilla of arrogance: he's got to show he's clocked it,' says one senior minister. Sedgemore's claims this weekend, in a GMTV interview, that 'hundreds' of MPs are poised to turn on the leader after the election are exaggerated, but his own mini-revolt is only one of several being planned on the left once the election is over.
There are threats of a stalking horse candidate running against Blair if he refuses to resign forthwith: Bob Marshall Andrews MP, the maverick left-winger, has publicly spoken of 'serious movements' to change the leader. A string of left-wing MPs, dutifully silent during the election, are planning speeches in the first two weeks of May, calling for a radical change of direction for the party.
Nonetheless, the threat of a revolt has been lessened by Brown and Blair's campaign rapprochement - and, in a shrunken parliamentary party, it may be uphill work to find the 82 MPs' signatures necessary for a coup. A majority of anything over 50, and Blair is probably safe: winning fewer than 209 seats, and Howard is not. But even a halved majority would rattle nerves.
One Blairite minister gloomily predicts 'a bloodbath' after polling day, as recriminations are traded between Brown and Blair camps for lost seats: 'This is the calm before the storm. I may be wrong, but I'm worried it will be the two sides back at it again.'
The young woman who stepped into Tony Blair's path as he finished his whirlwind tour of a nursing home in Risley, Northamptonshire, on Friday afternoon was nervous but emphatic. 'I just wanted to say, don't rise to the bait,' she told him, adding that she didn't want to get political but was upset by the tone of the Tory campaign.
Blair must now hope that Iraq, for all the damage it has done in the past week, is now finished business, at least for the rest of the campaign.
Today's revelations of the American meetings, the anger of Boyce and the faltering Labour lead in the polls will ensure that those around Blair continue to bite their nails as the last 96 hours of the campaign hove into view. Four days to go - four days during which Britain's longest serving Labour Prime Minister will wonder, as he races from town to town, speech to speech, interview to interview, if the result on 6 May is really in the bag.
Iraqis endured a second day of escalated violence yesterday, as insurgents launched attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 40 others.
Some of the worst attacks occurred in the capital, still reeling from Friday's bloodshed in which 17 bombs exploded, killing 50 people.
At least five car bombs exploded in Baghdad yesterday, US military spokesman Greg Kaufman said. They included a suicide attack targeting a joint US military and Iraqi police patrol, killing one Iraqi and wounding seven, including four policemen.
Minutes later, another suicide bomber ploughed into a civilian convoy outside the offices of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 Sunni Arab factions that had been negotiating for a stake in Iraq's new Shia-dominated government. The blast killed one person and injured 18.
A third suicide car bomb, targeting an Iraqi army patrol, exploded near the Mohammad Rasoul Allah Mosque in eastern Baghdad, killing three Iraqis and wounding four soldiers.
Two Iraqis - a policeman and a former official in Saddam's Baath Party - also died in shootings yesterday in the capital.
US officials had hoped Iraq's new government, which takes office on Tuesday, would help dent support for the militants in the Sunni Arab minority that dominated under Saddam, and is believed to be driving the insurgency. But the line-up of cabinet ministers excluded Sunnis.
· The 22-year-old American Army reservist, Lynndie England, will plead guilty to abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison, her lawyer said this weekend.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 29 - Insurgents determined to destabilize Iraq's new government executed a devastating series of coordinated attacks on Iraqi forces on Friday, detonating 12 car bombs across greater Baghdad and striking military targets throughout Iraq. At least 40 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded.
The attacks, a direct challenge to the new Shiite-dominated government that was formed Thursday, were aimed at Iraqi police officers and national guardsmen at their bases and traveling in convoys in northern and southern Baghdad and in Madaen, 15 miles southeast of the capital. At least 23 Iraqi policemen and troops were killed. Some reports put the total death toll at as many as 50 people.
Later in the day, other car bomb attacks struck Diyarah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing two American soldiers, and near Taji, just north of Baghdad, where a bomber killed one American soldier and wounded two others. One American soldier was also killed and four were wounded by a homemade bomb Thursday night near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad.
The strikes Friday morning came after a momentous and tumultuous day for the new government. After three months of delays that American officials said gave new strength to the insurgency, the dominant Shiite alliance won approval for a new cabinet - but not before angering Sunni political leaders who said they had been shortchanged.
The Shiites also pledged a housecleaning of former Baathists from the government, a move sure to drive a deeper wedge between Shiites and Sunnis, who conduct most insurgent activity. Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq's Baathist government under Saddam Hussein, largely boycotted elections in January.
With Friday's attacks, at least 480 Iraqi policemen and troops have been killed by insurgents in the last two months, according to tallies by Western security contractors, Iraqi officials and local news accounts.
Followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, claimed responsibility in Internet statements for a dozen attacks on Friday. The group also released an 18-minute recording said to be of Mr. Zarqawi that offered reassurances to insurgent fighters, warned Iraqis against negotiating peace with the United States and cited Pentagon data on shortfalls in American military recruiting.
In the streets, the insurgents once again turned to an increasingly common tactic: multiple bombings intended to kill not only the victims of the initial blast but also security forces and bystanders who rush to the aid of the wounded.
The strikes began just after 8 a.m. on Friday, the weekly holy day for most Iraqis, with four car bombs in the Adhamiya neighborhood, a heavily Sunni district in northern Baghdad that is home to many former Baathists. The attacks killed 7 Iraqi national guardsmen, 2 policemen and 4 civilians, and wounded 50 others, an Interior Ministry official said. Other reports said as many as 20 people had been killed there.
The first Adhamiya bomb went off next to a popular restaurant as an Iraqi convoy drove by, the police said. The blast propelled the crumpled remains of the bomber's vehicle more than 100 feet, where the police at the scene pointed to parts of the suicide bomber's body lodged in the charred wreckage.
Several pools of blood surrounded an aqua minivan in front of the destroyed restaurant. A child's stuffed animal, blackened from the blast, and women's sandals were strewn amid the bloody debris.
"It was terrible," said Muhammad Kadham, a 27-year-old worker who rushed to the scene. "Human body parts were everywhere. Ambulances have been busy carrying away the injured. It was insane." A few hours later, a car bomb aimed at a passing convoy of Iraqi National Guard troops detonated in the Ghadeer district in southern Baghdad, and 15 minutes later a second bomb struck in the same spot, killing one civilian and wounding four troops and four civilians, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.
In Madaen, a town of Sunnis and Shiites that has seen intense sectarian violence and insurgent activity, three car bombers struck in a coordinated attack that killed 3 Iraqi police commandos, 4 Iraqi troops and 2 civilians while wounding 38 others, the ministry official said.
In Baquba, a prominent cleric, Abdul-Razzaq Hamid Rashid, blew himself up with a hand grenade when Iraqi security forces tried to arrest him on Friday, a police official said.
Two homemade bombs were detonated Friday morning a few miles north of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, killing one Iraqi border guard and wounding another.
The violence, which the American military said was clearly aimed at discrediting the new government, showed that despite a lull in attacks after the Jan. 30 elections, the insurgents still have the resources and organizational structure to carry out disciplined and demoralizing strikes.
"Terrorists have still proven they can execute or surge their capability to conduct limited attacks," the American military said in a statement.
The American commander of the troops that oversee Baghdad, Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr. of the Third Infantry Division, described the Baghdad attacks in an interview on CNN as "another desperate attempt to try to derail the emerging democratic government."
"Today was just another spike that comes periodically," General Webster said, adding that his "message back to Zarqawi is that he's not going to win."
Friday's toll could have been worse. Five car bombs intended for Iraqi police stations and other targets in Salman Pak and eastern Baghdad were intercepted by the Iraqi police and troops, said Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, a military spokesman in Baghdad. Seven Iraqis suspected of involvement in Friday's attacks were captured, and another was wounded, the military said.
American officials disclosed new details of a previously discovered mass grave near Samawa in southern Iraq this week, saying they had exhumed at least 113 bodies, mostly Kurdish children and women, according to a pool report provided by American officials. Most victims had been shot with Kalashnikov rifles.
The new details followed the disclosure by Iraqi officials two weeks ago that the Samawa site held the remains of about 2,000 Kurdish members of the clan of Massoud Barzani who were killed by the government of Saddam Hussein.
It was impossible on Friday to verify the authenticity of the purported Zarqawi recording, but terrorism analysts said it appeared authentic. The Jordanian-born terrorist, who has a $25 million bounty on his head, delivered a wide-ranging speech warning resistance fighters against efforts to "open a dialogue" with American-led forces.
American military officials confirmed this week that they narrowly missed capturing Mr. Zarqawi in February near Ramadi.
A number of people claiming to speak for insurgent groups have approached American officials in Baghdad to open a dialogue, but they have been referred to the Iraqi authorities. It is not clear how the new Iraqi government will handle negotiations with insurgent fighters or requests for amnesty.
"They have tried a wicked trick to pull the carpet from under the feet of the mujahedeen," the speaker on the recording says of the authorities. "They made an offer to some defeatists who pretend they are mujahedeen to establish the nucleus of the Iraqi Army in Sunni areas."
The speaker also discusses American recruiting shortfalls and cites an article published in The Washington Post on March 19. Mr. Zarqawi's group opened a heightened media campaign in March and often releases several statements in a single day.
Along with familiar exhortations to armed struggle, the statement included an unusual reference to injustices committed against Sunni Arabs by Shiite army and police officers. Although Mr. Zarqawi and other insurgents initially aimed their attacks and oratory at Americans, they are increasingly striking Shiites, who predominate in the new government and Iraq's fledgling security forces.
Iraqi troops examine the wreckage of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's Adhamiya district
The car bombs went off within minutes of each other At least 29 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a wave of car bomb attacks targeting Iraqi security forces in and around Baghdad.
The apparently co-ordinated blasts come just a day after Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari unveiled his new cabinet.
No-one has admitted carrying out the attacks, the deadliest of which took place in Baghdad's Adhamiya area.
A tape purportedly from al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, calls for more attacks on US forces.
Posted on a website, the taped message is delivered by a speaker identifying himself as the Jordanian militant. He vows not to let President George W Bush enjoy "peace of mind".
Residents puzzled
The heaviest loss of life occurred in the wave of attacks across Baghdad.
Four blasts rocked the Sunni-dominated neighbourhood of Adhamiya at around 0800 (0400GMT), officials said.
The bombs went off within minutes of each other and targeted patrols of Iraqi police or national guards as well as a restaurant they frequent.
Why are they trying to set Sunnis and Shias apart? Adnan Aziz Salman Baghdad resident
In pictures: Iraq blasts
Cars were destroyed, shops gutted and pools of blood stained the streets of a district where insurgents have been active.
"Why are they killing innocent Iraqis? Why are they trying to set Sunnis and Shias apart?" one man inspecting the damage, Adnan Aziz Salman, said to Reuters news agency.
"They should go and kill our occupiers. We don't care who our leaders are. We just want security."
A short while later, a bomb also exploded as an Iraqi army convoy passed through the east of the city. At least one soldier was killed and eight wounded.
As people gathered to investigate the blast, a second bomb exploded.
Three devices also went off close to a military checkpoint, a hospital and a post office in the town of Madain, 30km south of Baghdad, killing troops and wounding civilians.
The town was recently taken over by Iraqi forces after reports that scores of Shia Muslims had been taken hostage by insurgents there.
Elsewhere in Iraq:
* a US convoy came under gunfire in Baghdad's southern Dura district. Nearby, a 10-year-old girl was wounded when a mortar shell landed on her home, said officials
* a bomb disposal expert was killed and at least one civilian wounded in the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq, local police said
* an Iraqi border patrol guard was killed and two wounded by a bomb attack in the southern city of Basra
* a US soldier was killed and four others wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Hawija, 240km (150 miles) north of Baghdad on Thursday, the US military said.
Challenge
Coming on the first day of the new Iraqi government, these attacks underline the overwhelming challenge facing the administration, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.
The attacks - on the Muslim day of worship - are the latest in an increased spate of insurgent violence in recent weeks.
The violence has coincided with the final stages of the long drawn out process of forming a new Iraqi government following January's elections.
The majority Shia community, as well as Iraqi and coalition troops, have been the most frequent targets of attacks.
Students from Arab language schools in Bucharest in a rally for the journalists.
The three Romanian journalists held hostage in Iraq are still alive after the expiry of an execution deadline and their abductors are ready to negotiate, one of their employers said.
The journalists' kidnappers had threatened to kill them unless Bucharest pledged to withdraw its 860 troops from Iraq by Tuesday afternoon, which Romania has in the past refused to do.
According to Dan Dumitru, an executive from Prima TV, which employs two of the reporters, the kidnappers had been touch with the stations.
"We were contacted three hours ago at the offices of Prima TV by a representative of the hostages who had us listen to a new message from our colleagues," Dumitru said.
Prima TV reporter Marie-Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Miscoci were seized in a Baghdad suburb on March 28 along with Romania Libera correspondent Eduard Ohanesian.
Dumitru said the message contained "a new appeal to the population to rally" and call for the withdrawal of Romanian troops from Iraq.
"Our lives are in your hands," Ohanesian was shown pleading in the video, in an appeal to both the Romanian government and population.
There has been no official reaction to the message by Bucharest.
Following the kidnapping, the Romanian President Traian Basescu vowed that Romania's troops would serve out their term as part of the U.S.-led forces in Iraq. He also met with the families of the three hostages on Tuesday afternoon.
Earlier in central Bucharest, several hundred people led by the hostages' families; journalists, students and Arab community representatives, held a silent rally in support of the journalists.
Romanian authorities have refused to comment on the hostage crisis to the media, although according to journalists who saw the latest video, negotiations are already taking place between Bucharest and the kidnappers.
The day after the kidnappers' set the Tuesday deadline in a video broadcast by a pan-Arab television broadcaster, Bucharest said it had transmitted a message to them, but refused to reveal its contents.
Dumitru said he was relieved by the latest message, saying it "proves that the kidnappers want to negotiate and communicate with Romania."
Portraits of Romanian journalists Eduard Ohanesian, Marie-Jeanne Ion and Sorin Miscoci in Paris
A video aired on Friday by an Arabic news channel showed three Romanian journalists and a translator held hostage in Iraq since last month.
The captors of the four threatened to kill them if Romania didn’t withdraw its troops from Iraq within four days of the video's release.
Prima TV reporter Marie-Jeanne Ion, cameraman Sorin Miscoci and Romania Libera correspondent Eduard Ohanesian were kidnapped on March 28.
In the black-and-white video, the hostages appeared sitting on the floor with their hands tied, while two gunmen stood over them, pointing weapons at them.
Speaking to the camera, Ion gave the news of the ultimatum and called on the Romanian government to accept the kidnappers' demands.
"The journalists appealed to the Romanian government to pull its troops from Iraq to ensure their release”, said the channel.
"Marie-Jeanne Ion, the female hostage, said that the kidnappers gave the Romanian government four days from the release of the video to withdraw its troops from Iraq or the journalists will be killed.
"She asked the Romanian people to organize protests in order to pressure the Romanian government in order to ensure that the kidnappers' demands are met," it added.
The journalists were reportedly snatched together with a U.S. businessman, identified as Mohamed Munaf, who served as their guide in Baghdad.
In a separate footage, Munaf called on the U.S. President George W. Bush to try to secure his release.
According to a senior Romanian official, Munaf was born in Iraq but has been living in Romania for the past several years.
He has citizenship in Iraq, the United States, and Romania, the official added.
A video grab shows the wreckage of a commercial helicopter in Baghdad April 21, 2005.
A group in Iraq released a video showing the wreckage and the eleven victims of Thursday’s helicopter crash.
The group claimed responsibility for shooting down a Bulgarian commercial helicopter north of Baghdad, killing 11 people, including 6 U.S. security contractors, 3 Bulgarian crew and two Fijian guards.
It also claimed that it seized and executed one of the victims.
The authenticity of the video couldn’t be verified.
U.S. and Bulgarian officials said on Thursday that the helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Citing information from the Bulgarian military, which is part of the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq, Bulgaria's defense ministry said "Today ... an Mi-8 helicopter owned by the Bulgarian company Heli Air, and with a Bulgarian crew, was shot down".
The group posted a video on the internet showing the wreckage and the shooting.
It said in a written statement that it “claims responsibility for bringing down a... cargo aircraft and killing all those on board in the regions of al-Taji north of Baghdad."
The video mainly focused on two bodies, one appeared to be dead and the other was alive but badly hurt. It then showed the fighters shooting down the wounded man.
The group said in its statement that the shooting was in revenge for all the peoplo who were killed “in cold blood in the mosques of tireless Fallujah before the eyes of the world and on television screens, without anyone condemning them."
The group was apparently referring to a video that showed a U.S. soldier shooting dead an unarmed wounded Iraqi in a mosque in November during the U.S. deadly offensive in the wrecked city.
In other violence, a car bomb exploded Friday outside a Shiite mosque in the Iraqi capital, killing ten people and injuring 20 others.
The explosion took place during midday prayers at Al-Subeih mosque, in Baghdad’s eastern New Baghdad neighborhood, said police Col. Ahmed Aboud.
Police sealed off the blast scene, which was heavily damaged by the blast.
Also Friday, Iraqi police said that nineteen bodies of slain Iraqi soldiers, abducted a few days ago, were found dumped near the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad.
“Police found 19 dead Iraqi soldiers in Baiji. They were taken hostage three or four days ago. They were found in a deserted place between Asainiya and Baiji, with bullet holes to the head and stomach,” said Captain Saad Nafos, police commander in Baiji.
In the northern city of Tal Afar, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol, killing one soldier and injuring another, the U.S. military said on Friday.
A relative holds the ID card of Lame'a Abed Khadawi
Unknown gunmen shot dead an Iraqi woman MP on the doorstep of her home in eastern Baghdad on Wednesday, an interior ministry official said.
"Armed men knocked at her door and when she answered, they shot her," the official said.
Lamiya Abed Khadawi was a member of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s coalition.
She was attacked shortly after she returned home following a meeting of the National Assembly in Baghdad.
The attackers escaped right after they killed her.
Khadawi is the first parliament member to be killed in Iraq since the January 30 elections. She was among 90 other women elected to Iraq’s National Assembly.
Allawi himself escaped an assassination attempt last Wednesday when a car bomb exploded at his convoy.
Unlike many members of Iraq's National Assembly, Khadawi did not employ bodyguards, depending mainly on her sons for protection.
The attack came as pressure mounted on Iraqi newly sworn-in leaders to end weeks of political deadlock and form a new government.
Prime minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari was expected to present his proposed list of ministers to the presidential council for approval. If passed, the candidates still need a majority vote from the National Assembly.
Parliament members met for several hours on Wednesday but it remained unclear whether they will vote on the cabinet list.
Americans believe the U.S. has got bogged down in Iraq
The poll showed that the Americans support for Mr. Bush has started to gradually ecline
According to a recently conducted opinion poll, the Americans' support for President George W. Bush has started to decline gradually.
Also the poll showed that the majority of the American people believe that their country has got bogged down in Iraq.
The survey prepared by the Washington Post and ABC News, and published on Tuesday, revealed major drops in key performance ratings for the American President, growing pessimism about the economy and a precipitous decline in support for Mr Bush’s Social Security plan.
Also the survey confirmed the views of some analysts who predicted a decline in public support for the U.S. involvement in Iraq.
Only 42 per cent supported the way President Bush is dealing with the situation in Iraq, a slight increase from the all-time low in March of 39 per cent.
Whereas 58 per cent believe that the United States has gotten bogged down in Iraq.
And 39 per cent said they are confident Iraq will have a stable, democratic government in a year.
The overall job approval rating of Mr. Bush stood at 47 per cent, matching his all-time low in a recent surveys.
Half of those who have been surveyed disapproved of the job he is doing as president.
Also the American President’s standing with the public was at new lows, with less than half the public supporting the way he handles the country's economy, energy policy and the situation in Iraq.
Only 4 in 10 approved the way Mr. Bush is dealing with the country’s economy, down six points since the start of the year. Slightly more than a third of the public approved the President’s energy policies.
Currently, most of the Americans are inclined to blame Mr. Bush rather than oil companies or other countries for soaring gasoline prices.
The survey results highlighted the fact that the American President is off to a difficult start in his second term, with Democrats far less willing to accommodate him and his policies than his victory in last November elections may have foreshadowed.
The survey also highlights the divisions within the Republican Party, whether that involves Mr Bush’s signature Social Security proposal or the intersection of religion and politics that has become a defining characteristic of the ruling party.
Another poll conducted by Gallup Organization showed that exactly half of all Americans, now believe that Mr. Bush has deliberately misled Americans about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
"This is the highest percentage that Gallup has found on this measure since the question was first asked in late May 2003," Gallup reported.
"At that time, 31% said the administration deliberately misled Americans. This sentiment has gradually increased over time, to 39% in July 2003, 43% in January/February 2004, and 47% in October 2004."
Gallup previously published the results of another poll that showed that 53% of the American people now believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "not worth it."
Back to 1968, polls showed that the majority of the Americans began to think the Vietnam war was a mistake, however the United States did not pull out of Vietnam for more than five years, after the war claimed the lives of thousands more of Americans, Frank Newport, editor in chief at Gallup, recalled.
Al-Jafari has held talks with the Sunni five-man committee
Three key Sunni Arab lawmakers have resigned from the dominant United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
The three, Fawaz al-Jarba, Mudhar Shawkat and Abd al-Rahman al-Niaimi, announced their resignation on Tuesday from the UIA which is led by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, Aljazeera learned.
The three members of parliament said they were resigning in protest against the attempt to marginalise Sunni Arabs. They also expressed resentment against what they called foreign interference in ministry-making decisions.
The three Sunni MPs had fought the 30 January elections on the UIA platform which won 140 of the 275 seats. Al-Jarba was in the running for vice-president before Ghazi al-Yawir was chosen for the post.
Meeting
Their decision to quit came as the five-man committee representing Sunni Arabs and headed by al-Yawir held a meeting with Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jafari to review allocation of ministerial portfolios, Aljazeera said, quoting Iraqi sources.
The meeting discussed the possibility of including another ministerial portfolio for the Sunni Arabs.
"The ministries offered to us, that of culture, governorate affairs, labour and social affairs should be replaced with that of education, commerce, planning, public works and housing, for example"
Tariq al-Hashimi, Iraqi National Front spokesman Sunni Arabs have demanded the post of deputy prime minister, the portfolio of education besides six other ministries.
Spokesman of the Iraqi National Front, Tariq al-Hashimi, told Aljazeera there were intense negotiations with al-Jafari.
"We received an offer for six portfolios to our demand for seven. The basic problem relates to the portfolios," he said.
"The ministries offered to us, that of culture, governorate affairs, labour and social affairs should be replaced with that of education, commerce, planning, public works and housing, for example," al-Hashimi said.
Asked what they have gained as Sunni representatives, the spokesman said: "We have not achieved much. We are still sticking to our demands which we had previously announced. We hoped that this chapter would be closed soon.
"But our brothers who won the elections were hesitant and the matter remained unresolved and not discussed in any detail," he said.
Rumsfeld speaks out
Reacting to the resignations and slow progress, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had told Iraqi officials during his recent visit to Baghdad earlier this month they should avoid unnecessary changes in the country's armed forces and the ministries that control them based on political considerations.
Speaking at a news conference at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Rumsfeld said some changes were inevitable, and that political considerations are legitimate as Iraq makes the transition to an elected government.
But he added that he had urged Iraq's new leaders not to make unnecessary changes in key military positions, and in the defence and interior ministries that supervise the security forces.
"To have success in the security forces, you have to have several things," he said. "And these are the words I used, 'You need to have competent people'."
He said even changing too often from one competent official or military officer to another would have a detrimental effect on the crucial effort to end the country's instability.
"We talked about trying to avoid undue turbulence... In other words, you can have equally competent people, but if you keep changing them, there's slippage.
"There just inevitably is slippage. And we can't afford slippage. If they want to reduce the level of the insurgency, having competent people and avoiding unnecessary turbulence is a high priority."
The ousted leader remains in prison as he turns 68 on Thursday
Saddam Hussein has met his lawyer for the first time in four months, the head of the defence team for the former Iraqi president says.
"The president is in good health and good spirits in his illegal captivity," Ziyad al-Khasawneh said on Wednesday.
Khasawneh said Hussein met for six hours with Khalil al-Duleimi, an Iraqi member of the Jordanian-based defence team hired by his family to defend him against charges, including killing thousands of Iraqis.
"Al-Duleimi is on his way back to Amman and we will know more details," said Khasawneh, adding that the former president had not had contact with his lawyers since al-Duleimi saw him at the end of last year.
"The president will play a major role in setting his defence strategy. We have submitted numerous requests to the tribunal through the Iraqi Bar Association to see him over the past months but they only answered us now," he added.
The ousted leader has been behind bars since he was captured by US forces in December 2003, in the town of al-Dour near Tikrit. He is held in a US prison on the edge of Baghdad.
Al-Duleimi said after meeting Hussein four months ago that the former president denied a US account that he surrendered to US forces when he was found in a hole.
Charges
Hussein, a Sunni Arab, faces charges related to crushing Kurdish and Shia revolts.
One of the more specific charges against the former president accuses him of killing members of the Kurdish Barzani family en masse, as well as a 1988 chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja that killed thousands.
Hussein appeared in front of an investigative judge last year and defended his 1990 invasion of Kuwait as fulfilling a just territorial claim.
He denied committing the Halabja massacre and said he heard about that through the media.
The former president was born in 1937 in the Awja village near Tikrit north of Baghdad. He turns 68 on Thursday.
An Iraqi general and a police lieutenant-colonel have been assassinated as the country's National Assembly prepares to vote on a proposed cabinet list.
Major-General Muhsen Abd al-Sada, who worked as an intelligence aide to an interior deputy minister, was gunned down as he drove to work on Thursday by three men who drove by in another vehicle in the southern Dura district of the capital, an Interior Ministry official said.
In a separate incident, police Lieutenant-Colonel Alaa Khalil Ibrahim was shot dead by unknown attackers in the east of the capital, the official said.
Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jafari said he expected his proposed cabinet would go before the National Assembly for a vote on Thursday.
Pressure has mounted on Iraq's politicians to end months of bickering since 30 January parliamentary elections.
Washington's top general has urged them to form a new government quickly to combat an uprising he says is as strong as it was a year ago.
Al-Jafari expects a vote on the cabinet list on Thursday
An Iraqi observer said the cabinet was likely to be approved with changes.
Journalist Abd al-Razaq al-Naas told Aljazeera on Thursday: "The political marathon might come to an end, but I think that the new government will be weak as there have been some proposed nominees who might not be approved by the Iraqi National Assembly.
"The names that are connected to the US occupation might not be agreed upon by the INA," he added.
Sunni Iraqi groups that boycotted the elections also would face an uphill battle for approval, al-Naas said.
More violence
Earlier, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and about 15 people wounded, including three US soldiers, when a car bomb exploded on Thursday morning in Tikrit, northern Iraq, Iraqi police and the US military said.
The car bomb went off at 7.30am (0330 GMT) and targeted a joint US-Iraqi military checkpoint in the north of the city, about 180km north of Baghdad, US Major Richard Goldenberg said.
Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and 10 people wounded, three of them US soldiers, Goldenberg added.
Iraqi police said that two Iraqi soldiers were killed, adding that 12 other Iraqis were wounded, seven of them soldiers.
In Samarra, about 100km north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb placed on a motorcycle killed two police officers and wounded five, police said.
Four people were also killed and 19 others wounded when a Katyusha rocket exploded in a bus station in the centre of the town of al-Msayab, south of Baghdad.
Police sources told Aljazeera that five Katyusha rockets were fired from a pickup truck. One of the rockets fell on the bus station.
Iraqi lawmaker slain; agreement reached on new Cabinet
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Assassins gunned down a member of the Iraqi National Assembly on Wednesday, hours before Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al Jaafari announced an agreement on his Cabinet to end the three-month impasse that has frustrated Iraqi voters and emboldened insurgents.
Lamia Abed Khadouri, a women's advocate who had received death threats, was killed on her doorstep after returning from the assembly meeting, according to authorities and her colleagues. Khadouri, the first member of the 275-person assembly to be assassinated, belonged to the political party overseen by caretaker Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Al Jaafari acknowledged that insurgents have taken advantage of the delay in forming a government to spread violence.
Even with an agreement on a Cabinet that's delicately balanced among ethnic and religious interests, the effects of months of bitter negotiations are likely to plague the nascent government.
Speaking to reporters at his home Wednesday, al Jaafari said he and President Jalal Talabani would submit their Cabinet picks to the assembly on Thursday, three months after Iraqis risked their lives to elect the assembly. A formal handover ceremony is expected within days.
"I'm well aware that it was a long wait for our Iraqi people," al Jaafari said. "The days of waiting were difficult, but I assure them it's over now."
Though al Jaafari didn't announce the names of ministers, his aides said the Cabinet comprises 17 Shiite Arabs, eight Kurds, six Sunni Arabs and one Christian. Seven women are said to be included.
Al Jaafari is a conservative Shiite who spent years of exile in Iran; Talabani is a Kurd who heads a powerful political faction in the semiautonomous northern Kurdish region.
Iraqi leaders were under intense U.S. pressure to form a Cabinet, but negotiations stagnated for weeks with squabbles among the dominant Shiite coalition, the influential Kurdish minority and Sunni Arabs, who were included despite a dismal performance at the polls. Of the five most important ministries, interior, finance and oil will go to Shiites, foreign affairs to a Kurd and defense to a Sunni Arab.
Already, three Sunni lawmakers from the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance list, withdrew from the process, saying they felt like tokens in an increasingly sectarian government.
"We found the sectarian phenomenon very obvious inside the United Iraqi Alliance list and this really hurt us," said Abdulrahman al Naimi, one of the Sunni members who withdrew from the coalition Tuesday. "I am a proud Sunni Arab and I will now join the opposition to the government to ensure Sunnis get all their rights."
The withdrawals cost the dominant bloc three votes on the assembly and underscored the perception that the new government favors Shiites. Even secular Shiite parties in the alliance, including that of controversial politician Ahmad Chalabi, voiced concern over the image of the alliance as dominated by clerics. Chalabi, a Shiite and the Pentagon's onetime top choice to rule Iraq, reportedly will become al Jaafari's deputy prime minister for national security.
"It is very unfortunate to have lost the Sunnis," said Haider Musawi, a spokesman for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. "They felt marginalized in the process."
Chalabi, however, led the drive to purge the mostly Sunni members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from the military and all government jobs.
Also conspicuously absent from the new government is Allawi, whose party won just 40 seats on the assembly. Shiite negotiators said it became impossible to balance Allawi's demands for power with those of Sunni factions expected to be more useful in reining in the mostly Sunni insurgency.
Allawi's party received a deeper blow Wednesday when Khadouri was killed as gunmen stormed her home in a middle-class neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, her close friend and colleague Satar al Bayer said. Her driver and bodyguard also were shot and remained in critical condition Wednesday.
Khadouri, a Shiite, led the women's office of the Iraqi National Accord, Allawi's political party. Bayer and other colleagues described her as a tireless advocate for human rights and said she'd been imprisoned under Saddam's regime as a sympathizer to opposition groups. Bayer said Khadouri had received death threats two weeks ago, but chose to continue her work in the assembly.
Another attack on an Iraqi lawmaker was foiled Wednesday, authorities said. Bayan Jabr, said to be al Jaafari's top choice for interior minister, survived the attack on his home in the Shiite enclave of Kadhemiya. Jabr is a member of the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - the dominant member of the Shiite alliance.
A car tried to overrun the heavy security outside Jabr's home after sunset Wednesday, but guards shot at the driver and stopped the attack, said Hadi al Ameri, the commander of the Badr Brigade. Jabr was unharmed and the suspect was detained and turned over to police, he added.
Insurgents fired mortars at a US military base in northern Iraq wounding an Iraqi civilian outside its perimeter.
In Baghdad, politicians met behind closed doors, trying to end an impasse that is delaying the formation of a transitional government.
Sunni Muslim politicians dropped their demand to include former members of Saddam Hussein's party in Iraq's new Cabinet in a bid to get more ministries.
The Sunni minority is believed to be the backbone of the insurgency, and many blame the impasse in forming a new government for a resurgence in violence.
The development came as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to persuade politicians from the Shi'ite majority and their Kurdish allies to wrap up negotiations to form a new government.
"We're going to continue to say it is important to keep momentum in the political process," Rice said.
In other developments:
- Charles Duelfer, the CIA's top weapons hunter in Iraq, said in his final report that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq "has been exhausted" without finding any. US and British warnings about Saddam Hussein's alleged WMDs had been a main argument for the coalition's invasion of Iraq more than two years ago. AdvertisementAdvertisemen t
- A senior US defence official said an American probe into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad is expected to conclude that US soldiers generally followed standing instructions when they fired on a car he was in.
But the probe into the March 4 shooting, during which the officer was guarding an Italian journalist leaving Iraq after she was freed as a hostage, is expected to raise questions about the rules of engagement at the checkpoint where the shooting occurred, the official said.
Meanwhile, attacks by Iraq's Sunni-led insurgents continued.
In Samarra, 95km north of Baghdad, insurgents fired five mortars at a U.S. base, with one landing outside it, said US Major Richard Goldenberg.
The Americans, who did not return fire, suffered no casualties, he said in an interview. However, the errant round wounded an Iraqi civilian, said police Lieutenant Qasim Muhammed.
On Monday, three roadside bombs aimed at US military convoys exploded, including one that killed an American soldier.
At least 1,569 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The US military said a suicide car bomb exploded in Ramadi, 115km west of Baghdad, wounding two civilians, and a 20-year-old Iraqi died at a US military hospital of injuries he suffered two weeks ago while attacking coalition forces.
ISLAMABAD, -- Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz announced Malik Javed, an abducted employee of the Pakistani Embassy in Baghdad, had been released, local media reported.
The announcement was made by the prime minister during a function in Islamabad in honor of the victory of Pakistan cricket team over India late Sunday night, according to a report of the local English language newspaper The News here on Monday.
"I am pleased to announce the release of Malik Javed in Iraq and I congratulate the nation on this good news," said the prime minister while interrupting the function.
"I went out of this program twice for none other reason than toget the latest on Malik Javed, who would be in Pakistan in three days. We have succeeded in negotiating his release and he is free now. That is a big news for Pakistan," Shaukat Aziz said.
He thanked all those countries which had helped in the successful negotiation for the release of Malik Javed.
Malik Javed, who did not have diplomatic status, was kidnapped on April 9 while he was returning to his residential quarter at Amariya district of Baghdad, from a mosque by some people who claimed to be from the Omar bin Khattab group.
Another local newspaper Dawn quoted Foreign Office Spokesman Jilani as saying that the attitude of the kidnappers with the victim was reportedly good and they did not torture him.
The kidnappers had also made some demands for Malik Javed's safe release. However, Pakistani authorities were reluctant to give any details in this regard, the report of Dawn said.
Police in Iraq say suicide bombers have detonated two car bombs outside a police academy in the northern city of Tikrit, killing at least six people and wounding dozens of others.
Authorities say four policemen were among those killed in the blasts, which went off just minutes apart. A curfew was imposed in the city after the deadly explosions.
Tikrit is the hometown of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The twin suicide bombings come amid a new wave of violence in Iraq, many targeting Iraqi police and soldiers. On Saturday, at least 12 people were killed, including an American soldier, as insurgents struck across the country with a series of bomb attacks.
A double suicide bomb attack on a police academy in the city of Tikrit in northern Iraq has killed six people and wounded about 30, police say.
Recruits were gathering at the academy before going off to a training course in Jordan when the first suicide bomber crashed his vehicle at the gate.
Minutes later, another bomber attacked while rescuers were trying to cope with the aftermath of the first blast.
Iraqi police and security forces have been frequently targeted by insurgents.
The attacks have increased recently across Iraq after a relative lull following January's elections.
In other developments:
* a gun battle between police and insurgents in Baquba, 60km (35 miles) north-east of Baghdad wounds two policemen and one militant, police tell the Associated Press news agency
* more than 150,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained and equipped, and for the first time, the Iraqi army, police, and security forces outnumber US forces in Iraq, President George W Bush says.
Violence down
The attacks in Tikrit - Saddam Hussein's home town - occurred within 20 minutes of each other, police said.
They targeted the police academy and an army liaison office.
Police said about a metric ton of explosives was used.
The first bomber detonated his charge outside the academy at 0810 (0410 GMT) as recruits were gathering before their trip to Jordan, police colonel Abdallah Ali told AFP news agency.
A second bomber blew up his car 20 minutes later outside the army office of liaison with US forces nearby, as survivors and rescuers were busy dealing with the first bomb.
The dead included four police and two civilians, police and hospital doctors said. Most of the wounded were policemen.
Iraqi insurgents struck across the country with bomb attacks on Saturday, killing at least 16 people, including an American soldier. U.S. forces captured six men suspected in the downing of a civilian helicopter and the shooting death of the lone survivor.
U.S. forces did not identify the captives or say where they were taken into custody.
The Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter, flying from Baghdad to Tikrit, was shot down about 12 miles north of the capital on Thursday. The dead included six American bodyguards for U.S. diplomats, three Bulgarian crew members and two security guards from Fiji.
Two groups claimed responsibility for the attack and released video to support their claims.
In one video, insurgents are seen capturing and shooting to death the lone survivor, identified as a Bulgarian pilot.
The aircraft was owned by Heli Air of Bulgaria and chartered by Toronto-based SkyLink Aviation Inc. The six Americans were employed by Blackwater Security Consulting a subsidiary of security contractor Blackwater USA of Moyock, N.C. Four of its employees were slain and mutilated by insurgents in Fallujah a year ago.
In other violence, Associated Press Television News cameraman Saleh Ibrahim was shot and killed when gunfire broke out after an explosion in the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
AP photographer Mohammed Ibrahim, no relation to the dead man, suffered shrapnel wounds in the same incident. While at the hospital, Mohamed Ibrahim was escorted away by U.S. forces along with his brother and their whereabouts could not immediately be determined. The U.S. military said it was investigating the incident.
Iraq has experienced a surge in militant attacks that have caused heavy casualties in recent weeks, ending a relative lull after the country's historic Jan. 30 elections. Iraqi leaders are struggling to form a Cabinet that will include members of the Sunni minority, believed to be the driving force in the insurgency.
A series of explosions shook the Iraqi capital Saturday. The most deadly was a roadside bomb that exploded near an Iraqi army convoy on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20, police said.
Some of the surviving soldiers opened fire in response, shooting and killing the driver of a civilian car, police said.
The attack occurred near the Abu Ghraib prison, which was at the center of a prison abuse scandal last year after photographs were publicized showing U.S. soldiers humiliating Iraqi inmates.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, a car bomb targeting a U.S. patrol detonated on a busy road that links to the perilous highway leading to the airport. One Iraqi was killed and seven wounded, hospital officials said. Three U.S. soldiers also were injured in the blast, which knocked down power lines and destroyed one military and two civilian vehicles, U.S. forces said.
In al-Haswah, west of Baghdad, a U.S. soldier assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, II Marine Expeditionary Force was killed when a roadside bomb exploded Saturday near the convoy in which he was traveling, the U.S. military said.
At least 1,565 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Also Saturday:
An Iraqi civilian was killed by a roadside bomb on a highway in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police said.
A roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army convoy in Mosul, wounding three soldiers, police and hospital officials said.
A bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in Abu al-Khasib, a town near Basra in southern Iraq. Two charred bodies were pulled from a destroyed car and at least two Iraqis were injured, police said. A leading Sunni group, the Association of Muslim Scholars, condemned the attack in a statement late Saturday, calling it a "hideous crime" and warned the militants they "will not crack our unity and sow dissension between us by spitting out your venom."
BAGHDAD: The fresh violence in Iraq claimed 19 people including nine Iraqi and four US soldiers on Saturday.
Nine Iraqi soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing west of Baghdad, one of a spate of deadly attacks in Iraq on Saturday, as US forces said they had captured six Iraqis suspected of involvement in downing a Bulgarian helicopter.
The bombing in Abu Ghraib, a district which is home to the notorious prison of the same name, came, wounded 20 people, a defence ministry official said.
In the capital, another suicide bomber killed an Iraqi and wounded at least 10 people, including three US troops, when he blew himself up near a US convoy on the road to the airport, officials said. The attack was claimed by Al Qaeda’s Iraq frontman Abu Musab Al Zarqawi on the Internet. Another bombing in western Baghdad killed an Iraqi woman and wounded seven people, officials said. And further west in the town of Al Haswah, a roadside bomb killed a US marine, the military said.
In northern Iraq, two truck drivers were killed in separate incidents near the oil refinery town of Beiji, police said. A US soldier was killed in Iraq on Saturday when a bomb exploded as his convoy passed west of the capital, the military said. Two US Marines were killed by a roadside bomb near Ramadi, about 100 km west of Baghdad, the US military said. Two civilians were killed by roadside bombs in Baquba, police said. A bomb in the southern city of Basra wounded seven police officers, police said.
On Friday, a car bomb blast ripped through a Shia mosque in eastern Baghdad, killing 11 people amid tensions between Iraq’s Sunnis and majority Shias.
The blast, which occurred as prayers were ending at Al Subeih mosque, destroyed part of the building and burst a water tank. Large red pools formed as blood mixed with the water, Reuters Television pictures showed.
In the latest guerrilla attack on Iraqi security forces, five National Guardsmen were found killed execution-style near Baiji, a town about 180km north of Baghdad, police said. The US military said that following a tip-off they had captured six suspects in Thursday’s shooting down of a helicopter that killed six US security guards, three Bulgarian crew and two Fijians.
The clock was meanwhile ticking down for three Romanian journalists threatened with death by their Islamist captors unless Bucharest pledges by Tuesday to withdraw its 800-strong force from Iraq.
Guerillas and thugs made the Iraqi town of Madain their home, and the results are only now surfacing.
ABU Qaddum lays out the pictures of mutilated bodies dredged from the Tigris River like a player dealing cards.
Some had their hands cut off, others were headless or burned. Another, with his tongue lolling out, was strangled. He thinks one bloated, slime-covered corpse might be that of his younger brother.
The shocking images come from Iraq's new killing fields - the small town of Madain, just 32km from Baghdad.
In other times the massacre might have prompted calls for international intervention. But there are already 150,000 US and British troops in Iraq and this was done under their noses.
Mr Qaddum's pictures are a terrifying testament to the chaos of Iraq.
Madain has had no police force since a mob of criminals and insurgents burned down the police station last year. The police fled.
Sunni guerillas quickly took over, running the town as their own criminal fiefdom and randomly killing Shia residents, whom they considered infidels and US sympathisers. Then they launched an all-out attempt to purge the town of its Shias.
News of this ethnic cleansing leaked out in confusing rumours. Shia officials spoke last weekend of a massive hostage-taking. But when Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos stormed the town they found car bombs, weapons and a training camp -- but no kidnappers and no hostages.
The whole story was dismissed as scaremongering. Then the photographs of the bodies emerged and with them the tale of Mr Qaddum -- a resident who survived the massacre and earlier this week alerted the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani.
"I think there may be 300 bodies in the Tigris," he said yesterday.
He recounted how, for the past year, Sunni insurgents had built bases in abandoned farmhouses concealed in the lush river plains south of Baghdad.
First the gangs attacked Madain's police station. An armed mob torched the building and the police cars. Emboldened by the lack of a response from the US-led occupation, the guerillas then started using a former Republican Guard base as a training camp.
More guerillas dribbled in, many affiliated to the extremist group Ansa al-Sunna and led by a Syrian called Annas abu Ayman. They installed a reign of terror, kidnapping government employees and members of Shia political parties. Sometimes the bodies surfaced in the palm groves, more often they just vanished.
When US forces stormed the guerilla stronghold of Fallujah last November more fighters arrived in Madain, on the eastern fringes of a lawless area known as the Triangle of Death. During Ramadan last northern autumn, throngs of Sunni guerillas mustered around a mosque, denouncing Shias as traitors and spies, lambasting them for not joining the resistance.
Mr Qaddum said the Shias did not respond until the guerillas assassinated their leader, Sheik Mahmoud al-Madaini, as he headed to prayers. His car was intercepted by a convoy of 15 vehicles packed with gunmen, who riddled it with bullets. The sheik, his son and three others were killed.
The Shias went to Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, their spiritual leader in the holy city of Najaf. Mr Qaddum said that the septuagenarian cleric, who is an avowed moderate, told them their relatives were martyrs but that they should stay their hand: the terrorists wanted the Shias to attack to spark a civil war -- which would be worse.
On February 10, a convoy of police finally arrived in Madain. At first the officers found the place calm. But news of their arrival had been leaked -- even Mr Qaddum knew that they were coming -- and the guerillas sprang a well-planned ambush.
Many officers died and the wounded who were captured were doused in petrol and burned to death. After that, the kidnapping and killing accelerated.
"They were taking two or three people a day, killing people in the street, going into people's houses to drag them out," Mr Qaddum said.
The guerillas also set up checkpoints on the road to Baghdad, executing government officials when they could find them, looting and burning lorries.
People were too scared to go to the market for fear of being seized. At night families stood guard in two-hour shifts. Six weeks ago Mr Qaddum's brother went to find a doctor for his sick wife and was never seen again.
The guerillas blew up a mosque and posted notices saying that Shias should leave town or die. The Shia political parties started a press campaign -- but it was dismissed by the Ministry of Interior, whose officials said that the whole affair was a tribal feud.
When Iraqi troops finally moved in they found no sign of the horror. They asked through loudspeakers for witnesses to show them where the terrorists and their hostages were. The Shias were too terrified to come forward, knowing that the troops could be gone in a week. The story was dismissed as exaggeration.
Then the first bodies were found. Some had drifted free of concrete slabs to which they had been tied before they were thrown in the river. A distraught father looking for his son heard about this and hired a Baghdad diver to investigate. The diver emerged, filled with horror, saying the river bed was thick with bodies.
So far 57 have been found, but Mr Qaddum - now a refugee living in another city under an assumed name - said local police were too afraid to retrieve more.
Locals want US troops to secure the area and send divers down for the rest.
US embassy and Iraqi government spokesmen said yesterday they were investigating the affair.
Footage from a video purporting to show a helicopter shot down in Iraq
Only one person survived the crash
An Iraqi insurgent group says it shot down a commercial helicopter that crashed near Baghdad on Thursday - and that it shot dead the only survivor.
The Islamic Army posted a video on the internet purporting to show the wreckage, and the shooting.
Eleven people died in the crash - six US security contractors, three Bulgarian crew and two Fijian guards.
A statement said the survivor was shot in revenge for "the murder of Muslims in the mosques of Falluja".
US and Bulgarian officials have confirmed the helicopter was lost about 20km (12 miles) north of the Iraqi capital on Thursday.
MAJOR AIRCRAFT LOSSES IN IRAQ 2 Nov 03: US Chinook helicopter shot down near Falluja, killing 16 9 Nov 03: US Black Hawk helicopter comes down near Tikrit, killing six 15 Nov 03: Two Black Hawks collide while trying to avoid ground fire in Mosul, killing 17 8 Jan 04: Black Hawk shot down near Falluja, killing nine 26 Jan 05: US Super Stallion in bad weather near the Jordanian border, killing 31 30 Jan 05: RAF Hercules transport plane comes down near Baghdad, killing 10
They said the Bulgarian Mi-8 helicopter was brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
It is believed to be the first time a civilian aircraft has been shot down over Iraq since the US-led invasion.
However, insurgents have shot down several US military helicopters.
In the video posted on the internet, it appears the amateur cameraman is running towards the scene of the crash, where wreckage is seen burning.
There is no verification of the video's authenticity.
Helped up
The cameraman focuses on two bodies. One appears to be dead and is badly charred.
The second person, wearing a blue flight suit, is alive but badly hurt.
The cameraman orders him to stand up, but the survivor says he has a broken leg and asks for help.
The militants appear to help him up, and tell him to run away.
Then they shoot him at point blank range and he collapses.
They continue to shoot the body, shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great).
A statement on the internet accompanying the video read: "The Islamic Army in Iraq claims responsibility for bringing down a... cargo aircraft and killing all those on board."
It said the killing was revenge for the murder of Muslims in Falluja - an apparent reference to a video showing a US soldier shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in a mosque in November.
Scene of a car bomb attack outside a Shia in Baghdad, 22 April 2005
An empty bus was destroyed by the force of the blast A car bomb has exploded outside a Shia mosque in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 20.
The blast happened during Friday prayers at the al-Subeih mosque in the eastern New Baghdad district.
It was the latest in a series of attacks on both Shia and Sunni mosques during the Iraqi insurgency.
Shias make up the majority of the population and Shia parties won most seats in January's election.
"I was rushing to the mosque in my car for Friday prayers when I heard a big blast," one witness told Reuters television.
"I ran inside and started carrying the bodies of those who were killed. My clothes were covered in blood."
The blast brought down one section of the mosque. A passenger bus parked outside was destroyed, but no-one was on board at the time.
Police sealed off the area around the mosque.
BBC Baghdad correspondent Caroline Hawley says Shia Muslims have been targeted before by Sunni militants trying to stir up sectarian divisions.
But a cleric at the mosque told the BBC he believed the mosque may have been targeted because on Thursday it hosted a joint service with Sunnis.
In other violence, a US soldier was killed and another wounded when a bomb exploded as their vehicle passed near Talafar in northern Iraq, the US military said.
Iraq Civilian Helicopter Crashes, Killing 9, U.S. Military Says
A civilian helicopter crashed in Iraq today killing nine people on board, the U.S. military said.
The incident, which occurred to the north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, is being investigated, said the military spokesman who declined to give his name in a phone interview and didn't immediately know the cause of the crash. Calls to the U.S. embassy seeking comment weren't answered.
The helicopter was shot down between Baghdad and the city of Tikrit, Cable News Network reported, citing unidentified officials at the Pentagon. Three crew and six passengers are believed to have been on board and were killed, CNN said. Three of the people on board were Bulgarian, Associated Press said, citing Bulgaria's Defense Ministry.
Supporters of Saddam Hussein's Sunni Baathist regime and followers of al-Qaeda-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have been leading a nationwide insurgency aimed at destabilizing the country and crippling its economy since the March 2003 U.S-led invasion that toppled Hussein.
Deliberate attacks against civilians are increasing, a sign that the insurgency is broadening from assaults on U.S. and Iraqi security forces and moving in the direction of civil war, according to analysts including Stephan Wolff, professor of Middle East politics at the University of Bath and a consultant to the U.K. Foreign Office.
Iraq's interim Defense Minister, Hazem Shaalan, today said that 19 people found shot to death in a stadium north of Baghdad were fishermen who'd apparently been captured by militants, the AP said. Residents yesterday thought the bodies were those of soldiers, the news agency said.
Photographs
International broadcasters today aired photographs of the bodies of more than 50 Shiite civilians that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said yesterday were found in the River Tigres and were killed by Sunni insurgents who seized them from the town of al-Madain last week.
By stepping up assaults on civilians, especially on Shiites, insurgents are sending a deliberate message to the new Iraqi government, Wolff said in an interview yesterday. Sunni militants are showing they want a return to the Baathist regime that provided them with privileges, while al-Qaeda-linked terrorists are making the point that they will never regard any Iraqi government as legitimate and want a Taliban-style regime, he said.
The helicopter that crashed today was a civilian version of the Russian Mi-8 operated by a company called Skylink out of Baghdad International Airport, CNN said, as it broadcast pictures of site that showed it as a burnt-out hulk.
An Australian security contractor was among three foreigners killed in a small arms attack on the road to the Baghdad International Airport yesterday, the Australian Foreign Office said in an e-mailed statement.
The group was traveling in a convoy when a gunman in a sports utility vehicle opened fire, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. The Islamic Army in Iraq, which has claimed responsibility for kidnapping several foreigners, said it carried out the killings, al-Jazeera reported.
The violence is occurring as political negotiations on Iraq's new government continue. Talabani said he isn't certain it will be unveiled today as he indicated it would be yesterday, al- Jazeera reported. Prime Minister designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari has one month from his April 7 appointment to name his 31 cabinet members, according to the Transitional Authority Law.
Iraqi police have found no signs of al-Madain killings or captives
Attacks on Iraqi forces and several assassinations have left at least 11 people dead and 50 wounded.
On Tuesday, fighters opened fire on members of Iraq's National Guard in Khaldiya, west of Baghdad, killing five people.
In Baghdad, a car bomber killed at least five people, including two guardsmen in the Adhamiya district, where fighters are active, Aljazeera reported.
At least 20 people were wounded in the blast.
"The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber driving a green-coloured Kia minibus", an Interior Ministry official said.
"Most of the victims were would-be recruits who wanted to join the army," he added.
In Baquba, 60km northeast of the capital, a roadside bomb missed a US military convoy but wounded three nearby civilians, police said.
Series of killings
On Tuesday morning, masked men armed with machine guns and travelling in two cars shot and killed professor Fuad Ibrahim Muhammad al-Bayati as he left his home for work at the University of Baghdad, police said.
Ten armed men killed a senior Defence Ministry adviser in his Baghdad home. Officials identified the man who was killed late on Monday along with his son, as Major-General Adnan Midhish al-Qaraghulli.
Relatives carry al-Qaraghulli's coffin after Monday night's attack Separately, Iraqi police announced that a police Brigadier-General Yunis Muhammad Sulaiman was murdered on his way to work in Mosul on Sunday.
In another attack on Monday evening, Brigadier-General Husain Hatu al-Jibairi, and his driver were shot dead in their car in Amara, 350km southeast of Baghdad, police captain Karim Assaf said.
Al-Jibairi was an inspector general for the Interior Ministry responsible for three southern provinces.
The killings come as tensions continue to grow in al-Madain.
Iraqi forces regained control of the town near Baghdad, arresting about 40 people, Aljazeera learned.
The three-day standoff around al-Madain, fuelled by rumour, suspicion and sharply contradictory reports, had threatened to spiral into an all-out national crisis, as Sunnis and Shia continue to haggle over forming a new government two and a half months after landmark elections.
Rumours
"These were just rumours promoted by the media and other parties to create a fight in the area," outgoing interim Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, a Sunni, said during a visit to the town.
"There are no signs of any killings"
Iraqi Brigadier-General Muhammad Sabri Latif Earlier, a 1500-strong Iraqi force backed by US soldiers swept into town, but all they found were deserted streets, shuttered shops and most of the 7000 residents cowering in their homes, an AFP correspondent embedded with US troops reported.
"I don't think we'll find any," said Iraqi Brigadier-General Muhammad Sabri Latif.
"I think they (armed men) ran away to the other side of the river. Possibly they took hostages with them. There are no signs of any killings."
The prime minister's office confirmed in a statement that no captives were found in al-Madain, 30km southeast of the capital, in an area considered a fighter stronghold.
Empty streets
Hooded Iraqi commandos in four-wheel drive vehicles and green-and-yellow pick-up trucks flying large Iraqi flags patrolled the deserted streets, backed by US soldiers and Apache attack helicopters.
The military operation followed reports that Sunni armed men on Friday abducted up to 80 people and threatened to kill them unless all Shia left the town.
Iraqi special forces found no captives in al-Madain
The report, originating with people fleeing the town and officials from the interior and defence ministries, was given front-page coverage in the Iraqi press and sent shockwaves throughout parliament where members called for immediate military action.
In al-Madain on Monday, Major- General Adnan Thabit suggested hostages had been held in the town, but only as a result of a "tribal problem" and that "media channels and some political parties made a huge issue of it".
But according to one civilian, Ayad Tallal, 22, who arrived in town on Saturday to visit relatives, armed men had been terrorising the inhabitants for weeks, threatening to kill anyone who collaborated with the authorities.
The US military said Iraqi forces were pushing south of the town along the River Tigris to sweep through villages.
Iraqi commandos also came across a car bomb factory in an abandoned farm, along with detonators and mortar rounds.
Sectarian tensions
The latest incident threatened to raise sectarian tensions between the Shia majority, whose main political bloc took a majority of seats in parliament in January's elections, and Sunnis who have lost the privilege and power they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein's ousted government.
Elsewhere, Iraqi police battled fighters who tried to overrun a police station in the main northern city of Mosul on Monday, as US troops arrested 18 others in nearby Tal Afar, a US military statement said.
"No to terrorism. No to occupation"
Iraqi protesters Nearly 50 fighters firing mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and guns attacked a Mosul police station. Police managed to fend off the attackers, the US statement said without elaborating.
Iraq's third largest city is a stronghold of anti-US fighters which has been gripped by violence since November when police abandoned their posts following fighter attacks.
In Tal Afar, to the west, US troops detained 18 suspected fighters, the US statement said.
Demonstrations
And at least 10 people were killed in attacks, while saboteurs set ablaze an oil pipeline linking the northern oil centre of Kirkuk to the Baiji refinery.
On Monday, about 150 Shia from nearby Hurriya village staged a demonstration in Baghdad, weeping and holding photos of 18 men and boys they said had been missing for about 10 days.
In another protest in Baghdad, hundreds of Shia demanded the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and condemned all terrorist attacks against Iraqis.
Raising Iraqi flags, the protesters chanted: "No to terrorism. No to occupation."
An effigy of Saddam Hussein was pulled down again in Baghdad's Ferdos Square last week, but unlike the made-for-TV event when U.S. troops first entered the Iraqi capital, the ousting of Saddam on second anniversary of the occupation was different.
Rather than U.S. marines along with a few dozen Iraqi bystanders; 300,000 Iraqis were on hand.
They threw down effigies of Bush and Blair as well as those of Saddam, at a rally that did not celebrate liberation but instead called for the immediate departure of foreign troops.
For most Iraqis, except maybe the Kurds, Washington's "liberation" never was.
Wounded national pride was greater than relief at Saddam's departure.
Any warmth felt to the American occupiers soon evaporated as Iraqis became angered by the failure to get power and water supplies repaired, the brutality of U.S. army tactics, and the disappearance of their country's precious oil revenues into inadequately supervised accounts, or handed to foreigners under contracts that produced no benefits for Iraqis.
From last autumn's disastrous attack on Falluja to the huge increase in detention without trial, the casualties go on rising. After an amnesty last summer, the numbers of "security detainees" have gone up again and reaching a record 17,000.
Last weeks vast protest showed that the opposition is still growing, the biggest since foreign troops invaded, in spite of U.S. and British protestations of have Iraqis' best interests at heart.
Even more significant, the protestors were mainly Shias, who poured in from the impoverished eastern suburb known as Sadr City.
The Bush-Blair spin likes to suggest that protest is confined to Sunnis, with the nod and wink that these people are simply disgruntled former Saddam supporters or people linked to al-Qaida, and therefore need not be treated as legitimate objectors.
The fact that the march was largely Shia and against Saddam, Bush and Blair gives the lie to that.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric who organised the latest march, recently joined forces with the National Foundation Congress, a group of Sunni and Shia nationalists, to affirm "the legitimate right of the Iraqi resistance to defend their country and its destiny" while "rejecting (terror) aimed at innocent Iraqis, institutions, public buildings and places of worship".
The key issue, now as it has been since 2003, is for the occupation to end quickly. Only then will the level of resistance reduce and give Iraqis a chance to live normally. In a new line of spin - which some commentators have taken to mean that the U.S. is preparing for a pullout - U.S. commanders claim the rate of attacks is down.
The figures are not independently monitored. Even if true, they may be temporary. Thirdly, they fly in the face of evidence that suggests the U.S. is failing. Most of western Iraq is out of U.S. control.
The city of Mosul could explode at any moment while Ramadi is practically a no-go area.
In any case, the U.S. is only talking of a possible reduction of a third of its troops next year which would still leave some 100,000 in Iraq.
Washington argues that a complete withdrawal has to be "conditions-related, not calendar-related" or, as Tony Blair puts it, there can be no "artificial timetable". What they mean is that Iraq's security forces have to be strong enough to replace the Americans and British, a totally elastic marker.
That is surely the message that Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defence secretary, gave during his 'surprise' visit to Iraq, his ninth trip since April 2003. Whenever there is an alleged transfer of power to Iraqis, this time to a "government" elected in a flawed poll, Rumsfeld flies in with a new set of instructions.
His public warning is for Iraq's leaders not to make any changes in the army and interior ministries, or postpone the writing of a constitution. Behind the scenes, he is probably telling them not to ask for a withdrawal timetable, and sounding them out on the opposite.
The U.S. has indicated that it wants permanent bases in Iraq, just as it does in Afghanistan - which is why the joint Sadr-National Foundation Congress statement says the government "will have no right to ratify any agreement or treaty that might affect Iraq's sovereignty, the unity of its territory and the preservation of its resources".
Poland has just announced it is pulling out of Iraq at the end of the year, just as Spain did last year. IWhile taly is wavering on the verge of a similar decision. And if Blair yearns to regain the public's trust he lost before the Iraq war, his best approach would be to announce the same by May 5.
He would not only be helping the Iraqis but himself as well.
Ahmed Ali Mohammed hugs the body of his brother, an Iraqi Army soldier at al-Ramadi Hospital
A car bomb explosion outside an Iraqi army recruitment center and other violent attacks killed 12 people and wounded at least 50 others in Iraq on Tuesday.
Six people, including two soldiers, were killed, and 44 others were injured on Tuesday when a bomb exploded outside a recruitment center in the Azamiyah section of the Iraqi capital, police Col. Hussein Mutlaq said.
Also Tuesday, gunmen opened fire on Iraqi soldiers in Khalidiyah, 75 miles west of Baghdad, killing four and wounding seven other, according to hospital officials.
Near Haditha, northwest of the Iraqi capital, residents said U.S. warplanes bombed several areas in the town, saying they are suspected "insurgent hideout".
Local doctor Waleed al-Hadithi reported that two people were killed and three others were wounded.
Violent attacks claimed the lives of hundreds of Iraqi security forces and police during recent months, raising concerns that the people who are supposed to protect Iraqis can't even protect themselves.
Meanwhile, masked men with machine guns in two cars shot dead Fouad al- Bayati, Baghdad University professor, while he was on his way to work, police said.
In the Iskandariyah area, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, an Iraqi civilian was killed and three others were wounded, in an attack that missed a U.S. military convoy.
At Camp Bucca, a United States detention facility in Iraq, a 51-year-old detainee died of what the U.S. military described as natural causes.
Insurgents in Iraq increasingly target top government officials and military recruits
Parliament delays meeting after alleged mistreatment of legislator by U.S. at checkpoint
Insurgents in Iraq increasingly target top government officials and military recruits
A suicide bomber killed six people Tuesday outside an Iraqi Army recruitment center in Baghdad, as insurgents stepped up attacks on targets ranging from would-be recruits to top military officers in their homes. The latest bloodshed came as politicians continued to wrangle over the make-up of the next government, more than 11 weeks after general elections, a delay that many fear plays into rebel hands.
A suicide bomber blew up a car outside a palace of ousted president Saddam Hussein, now used by the army, killing six people and wounding 40, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
Most of the victims were soldiers or would-be recruits.
At least seven civilians were wounded when a second car bomber later the same day targeted a U.S. patrol in west Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.
The Al-Qaeda-linked group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in an Internet site it uses to claim operations in Iraq, said it carried out the latest deadly attack.
The Defense Ministry spokesman said at least three more soldiers were killed in another attack Tuesday against an army patrol in Khalidiyah, west of the capital.
In a chilling raid underlining insecurity in post-Saddam Iraq, several men in army uniforms late Monday forced their way into the southern Baghdad home of Major General Adnan Faush Farawni, a senior adviser to the Defense Ministry.
Both he and his son, Captain Alladin Farawni, who worked in intelligence, were shot dead.
Revealing that civilians are no more spared from the rampant violence than officials, three men in a car on Tuesday gunned down Fuwad Ibrahim al-Bayatie, head of the German language department at Baghdad University outside his west Baghdad home.
Meanwhile, politicians pushed on with their efforts to agree on the make-up of the new Iraqi government, 11 weeks after general elections won by the Shiite majority and the Kurds.
An MP involved in the negotiations, Mariam al-Rais, from the majority United Alliance list, said the government should be announced by the end of the week.
A last sticking point involved the number of ministries to be given to members of the outgoing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's formation, she said.
Iraq's National Assembly briefly delayed its session Tuesday to protest the alleged mistreatment of a legislator by a soldier at a U.S. checkpoint outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, where parliament meets.
In an emotional speech to the legislature, a sobbing Fattah al-Sheikh, whose small party has been linked to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said the American soldier had kicked his car, mocked the legislature, handcuffed him and held him by the neck.
"What happened to me represents an insult to the whole National Assembly that was elected by the Iraqi people. This shows that the democracy we are enjoying is fake," he said.
Before the legislative session resumed, lawmaker Salam al-Maliki read a statement from the assembly to reporters demanding an apology from the U.S. Embassy and the prosecution of the U.S. soldier who allegedly had mistreated Sheikh.
U.S. forces said they had heard of the incident and were investigating it.
It was the third day running that legislators were sidetracked from the business of setting up a new government and constitution.
Much of their time was taken up by reports that up to 100 Shiite residents had been taken hostage by Sunni militants in Madain, a town 20 kilometers south of the capital in an insurgent stronghold known as Iraq's "Triangle of Death." The reports raised fears of a sectarian crisis in Iraq. Hundreds of Iraqi security forces moved into the town at dawn Monday, finding weapons, car bombs and a suspected insurgent training facility - but no hostages.
BAGHDAD, — Rebel attacks killed at least 12 people in Iraq yesterday as a steep increase in violence piled pressure on politicians struggling to form a government more than 11 weeks after elections.
In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed four National Guards in the Athamiya district, police and hospital officials said. Thirty-eight people were wounded in the blast — the latest in a string of car bombings in the capital in the past week.
Another suicide car bomber detonated next to a US Army convoy traveling close to the capital’s international airport and locals said there were many casualties. A US military spokesman said he had no immediate information.
West of the capital, insurgents opened fire on members of Iraq’s National Guards in the restive town of Khaldiya, killing five people and wounding four, police said. Near Haditha, another violent city on the River Euphrates northwest of the capital, residents said US warplanes bombed a suspected insurgent hideout. Local doctor Waleed Al-Hadithi said two people were killed and three wounded.
Al-Qaeda’s wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, said a member of its “martyrs’ brigade” carried out the car bombing on the National Guards in Baghdad, according to a statement posted on the Internet.
In a chilling raid underlining insecurity in post-Saddam Iraq, several men in army uniforms late Monday forced their way into the southern Baghdad home of Maj. Gen. Adnan Faush Farawni, a senior adviser to the Defense Ministry. Both he and his son, Capt. Alladin Farawni, who worked in intelligence, were shot dead, the interior and defense ministries told AFP.
In another Monday evening attack, an inspector general for southern provinces, Brig. Gen. Hussein Hato Al-Jabeeri, and his driver were shot dead in their car in Amara, some 350 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, a police captain said. On Sunday, another top ranking officer, Brig. Gen. Yunis Mohammed Sulaiman, was murdered on his way to work in the main northern city of Mosul.
In the continuing bloodshed that leaves civilians unspared, three men in a car yesterday gunned down Fuwad Ibrahim Al-Bayatie, head of the German language department at Baghdad University outside his west Baghdad home, an Interior Ministry official said.
Fears for the safety of its civilian nationals brought a call from the Philippines government yesterday for them to leave Iraq. The call came after two Filipinos died in Iraq last week. President Gloria Arroyo’s spokesman Ignacio Bunye said the attacks were a “warning that the situation in Iraq remains dangerous to our people.” Up to an estimated 6,000 Filipinos work in Iraq, many for the US military.
In Stockholm, the Foreign Ministry said a Swede of Iraqi origin had gone missing in Syria while on his way to Iraq and had not been heard from for three weeks. According to Swedish news agency TT, the man, whose name was not disclosed, is a senior member of the Iraqi Communist Party and was working as an economic adviser to the Iraqi government when he disappeared.
Meanwhile, politicians pushed on with their efforts to reach agreement on the makeup of the new Iraqi government, 11 weeks after general elections won by the Shiite majority and the Kurds. An MP involved in the negotiations, Mariam Al-Rais, from the majority United Alliance list, said the government should be announced by the end of the week.
A last sticking point involved the number of ministries to be given to members of the outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s formation, she said. The Shiite-based United Alliance was expected to be handed 17 ministries, including interior, oil and finance, while the Kurds would get nine, retaining the Foreign Ministry, Al-Rais told AFP.
Angry MPs suspended a sitting of Parliament for an hour yesterday and then passed a motion demanding an official apology from the United States after an MP was manhandled by a US soldier at a checkpoint in Baghdad. They called for the soldier to be disciplined.
The US Army said a 51-year-old man detained at Camp Bucca, in the south of the country, died yesterday, apparently of natural causes. Camp Bucca, the country’s largest US-run detention facility, has more than 6,000 inmates. US and Iraqi forces are currently holding more than 17,000 people.
On the economic front, Iraq has officially resumed crude oil exports to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, a State Oil Marketing Organization official said. He declined to give any new export statistics for security reasons. Oil exports through Turkey, previously averaging 350,000 barrels per day from Kirkuk oil fields in northern Iraq, have repeatedly been brought to a halt by sabotage.
Iraqi forces reportedly met with no resistance upon entering Madain
Iraqi forces have reportedly found no hostages in the Iraqi town of Madain, where Sunni militants were said to have taken scores of Shia captive.
The security forces say no-one resisted their move to take control in the town.
A leading Sunni cleric has told the BBC the reports of hostage-taking were fabricated as an excuse to raid Madain.
Iraq's outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi had described the reported hostage-taking as a "dirty atrocity" designed to foment sectarian strife.
Reports say a force of 1,500 Iraqi soldiers, backed up by US forces, entered the town of Madain, some 30km south of Baghdad, in an area known as a stronghold of bandits and insurgents.
Sectarian tensions
The BBC's Baghdad correspondent, Caroline Hawley, says the uncertainty over what happened in Madain risks inflaming Iraq's sectarian tensions.
She said Shia politicians are being accused of exaggerating the story in order to divert attention from their difficulty in forming a government and to discredit the security forces, whom they want purged of members loyal to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi family outside Madain US forces have kept watch from the outskirts of Madain
Our correspondent says the area around Madain is a dangerous and lawless area where sectarian tensions have been high and where there have been a string of recent tit-for-tat kidnappings.
An Iraqi army spokesman, Brig Gen Mohammed Sabri Latif, told the AFP news agency the city was in government control.
"We've secured houses where people said there were hostages. We could not find any. I don't think we'll find any. There are no signs of any killings," he said.
He added that militants may have fled across the river, taking with them any people they may have taken hostage.
In other violence, at least two people are said to have died when a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy of police vehicles in the southern Iraqi town of Basra.
Militants also blew up an oil pipeline near Iraq's biggest refinery in the northern town of Beiji, sending a tower of smoke into the air and covering the nearby River Tigris with a burning oil slick.
Tribal divisions
Iraqi officials said last week that Sunni militants had called on the town's Shia residents to leave, and a local mosque has been destroyed.
A Shia official had claimed the militants had taken up to 100 Shias hostage.
A spokesman for the Committee of Muslim Scholars, Sunni cleric Sheikh Abdulsalem al-Qubaisi, told the BBC the story had been fabricated as an excuse to raid the town and rid it of insurgents.
Some of the town's residents have also dismissed the reported hostage-taking.
According to a website used by militants, Iraq's most-wanted insurgent, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said his al-Qaeda-linked organisation had not taken any hostages in Madain.
He too claimed the story was a pretext for cracking down on the town's Sunnis.
At a session of Iraq's new parliament on Sunday, politicians warned of attempts to divide the country along sectarian lines.
An MP in the Shia-dominated house said security forces had done nothing to stop "sectarian cleansing" in Madain.
Iraq's increasingly violent sectarian conflict has intensified, with Sunni gunmen threatening to kill dozens of Shia civilians who have been taken hostage in a town near Baghdad.
The insurgents said they would execute the hostages at Madain, south-east of the capital, unless all Shias left the area.
Qassim Dawoud, the national security minister, said troops had freed 15 families, and arrested five gunmen.
Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, blamed the attempt at ethnic cleansing on "evil powers planning extremist terror'', and promised that Iraqi and US forces would free the captives and find their captors.
But while troops began operations inside the town, rebels struck elsewhere in the country, killing 24 people in 24 hours, including four US soldiers.
The insurgent offensive at Madain began with an attack on a Shia mosque, Al Rassoul Hussaniyah. Gunmen then set up roadblocks and used loudspeakers to order Shias to leave town. According to security forces, the hostage-taking began soon afterwards.
Haitham Husseini, a spokesman for Iraq's largest Shia group, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution said: "There were about 100 masked men riding in cars through the town. They took hostages, mainly men. The families are now contacting us and asking for our help. They fear that those taken away will be killed."
Some Shia clerics and politicians criticised the US authorities and the Iraqi government for failing to foresee the attack.
Jala Aldin al-Saghir, a senior Shia cleric and a member of the legislature, said: "We have repeatedly warned that sectarian cleansing was going on in this area. But neither the police or the Americans have taken notice ... There are people who just want to drive the Shias away."
Madain is a town with a mixed Shia and Sunni population, and has been the scene of attacks by Sunni insurgents. The attack came after the insurgents, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, America's most wanted man in Iraq, said they were joining forces with a number of other rebel groups.
The group, known as al-Qa'ida in Iraq, said the organisation would be known as the Iraqi Mujahedin.
Zarqawi's group claimed the abductions in Madain were "staged'' by "the infidels and their Iraqi allies'' to justify attacks on the Sunni population.
Many Shia residents have already fled Madain following the insurgent threats. Khodeir Ali Abbas, who left with 10 members of his family for the nearby city of Al Kut said: "We had no choice. Gunmen surrounded the town and we were afraid they would kill us if we did not leave. There have been other kidnappings in the past, but not anything as large as this."
Iraqi officials say there has been a rise in attacks on Shias since the elections at the end of January which saw the Shia community gain power for the first time in 100 years. Large numbers of the Sunni electorate stayed away from the polls after warnings to do so by insurgents and because many felt that fair voting could not take place under US and British occupation.
Barham Salih, the Deputy Prime Minister, said: "There are security problems in Madain with tribal implications. But there is no doubt there are people trying to cause sectarian strife."
By late yesterday US and Iraqi soldiers were hoping to have regained about half the town. Unconfirmed reports said a number of civilians, including hostages, had been killed. Among the casualties was Colonel Ammar Al-Dakhily, a senior officer in the Iraqi army's anti-insurgency unit.
Elsewhere three US soldiers were killed and seven injured when insurgents attacked a US base near Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. Residents said up to 50 rebels had tried to storm Camp Blue Diamond and fled into a nearby mosque after a gunfight.
Another US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb near Taji, north of the capital, and a bomb killed nine Iraqis in a crowded restaurant in the city of Baquba. In Haditha, west of the capital, gunmen killed the town's police chief and three members of his family in an attack on his house.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Iraq's prime minister designate, was due to announce the new cabinet yesterday. But he said he needed more time to discuss the distribution of portfolios, including how to bring the disenfranchised Sunni community into the parliamentary process.
Children and women are said to be among Monday's fatalities
Twenty Iraqis have been killed and 22 injured after US helicopters and heavy artillery bombed houses in al-Rummana village, north of al-Qaim city, Aljazeera reported.
Seven children, six women and three old men were among the dead, witnesses said, while the injured included 13 children, seven women and two old men.
The witnesses added that the shelling started after US forces, who landed near al-Qaim on Monday night, came under repeated attack.
Early reports indicated one house was completely destroyed and three others partially damaged in the bombing, according to Aljazeera.
On Monday, five car bombs hit US military targets in the western Iraqi city of al-Qaim near the border with Syria, wounding at least two US soldiers.
Separately, the US embassy in Iraq announced that an American contractor working in a reconstruction project had been captured.
Simultaneous attacks
Iraqi journalist Ahmad Khalid told Aljazeera two of Monday's attacks in al-Qaim were simultaneous. Three bombs hit a building used as US military headquarters while a fourth targeted a US troop convoy.
Al-Qaim on the border with Syria has seen frequent gun battles
Clashes erupted later between fighters and US soldiers in the city, damaging a number of houses, the journalist said.
However, no civilians were injured in those clashes as they had fled.
A spokesperson for the US Marines said on Monday three of their soldiers were wounded in the attack, which occurred outside Camp Gannon, a base in al-Qaim, about 300km west of Baghdad in Anbar province.
Late on Monday, armed men opened fire on a police patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, injuring two members of the security service, police Brigadier Sarhat Kadir said.
Narrow escape
Attackers also placed a bomb in the undercarriage of a doctor's car, but the device exploded as the physician entered a Kirkuk store to buy bread, sparing him but wounding two nearby civilians, Kadir said.
"It is the government's opinion that, together with the end of the UN mandate for the stabilisation mission, all the activity of the Polish stabilisation mission should also end"
Jerzy Smajdzinski, Polish Defence Minister It was not known why the attackers targeted the doctor.
Meanwhile, Poland's defence minister has said the government wants its troops to leave Iraq in the first weeks of 2006 after the authorising UN resolution expires.
"It is the government's opinion that, together with the end of the UN mandate for the stabilisation mission, all the activity of the Polish stabilisation mission should also end," Defence Minister Jerzy Smajdzinski said.
Poland, one of Washington's closest allies in Europe, runs a multi-national stabilisation force in south-central Iraq, where it has about 1700 soldiers.
Kirkuk has been on edge since the 30 January elections
A Kurdish television journalist has been shot and killed in the ethnically divided oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.
Shamal Abd Allah Assad, who worked for the local station of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, was shot dead on Friday by armed men in a car park, said police Colonel Ad al-Zain al-Abidin Ibrahim.
Kirkuk, home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, has been on edge since the 30 January elections that saw Kurds move closer to their goal of annexing the city to Kurdistan.
Two journalists were shot and killed in the northern city of Mosul in March and February. One of them was a reporter with a local Kurdish television station.
At least 50 journalists and other media workers have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq two years ago.
Car bomb
A car bomb targeting a convoy of Iraqi national guards exploded in al-Amiriya neighbourhood west of Baghdad on Friday, Aljazeera learned. No casualties were reported.
In the Khan Dhari area near the Abu Ghraib neighbourhood, a roadside bomb destroyed a US Humvee and wounded several US soldiers in it, Aljazeera learned.
Two US marines were killed in separate attacks on Wednesday and Thursday, the US military revealed on Friday.
One marine, assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, died on Wednesday when a mortar round landed inside a military base at Camp Hit in western Iraq, the military said.
The second marine, assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed on Thursday by anti-US fighters while conducting combat operations in Ramadi.
The names of both were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
Fresh blasts hit Iraq, video shows Pakistani hostage
Iraqi children cry following a bomb attack near their home in Baghdad April 15, 2005.
Three bomb blasts targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Iraqi capital killed four people and injured eight others, police and witnesses said on Friday.
The first explosion took place in eastern Baghdad when a bomb hit an Iraqi convoy, killing one civilian and injuring three people, police said.
Another car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour neighborhood killed at least one person and injured more than five others, the U.S. army said.
Witnesses said several bodies were seen lying in the road after the Mansour attack and that many cars were also damaged. One witness said that he saw black smoke rising near a restaurant following the explosion.
In the central city of Samarra, a roadside bomb killed two Iraqi soldiers, an army source said.
On Thursday, two car bombs exploded at an Iraqi police convoy outside an Interior Ministry office in a southeastern Baghdad neighborhood, killing 18 people and wounding 36 others. Four more people were killed in another explosion in Hilla, some 100 km south of the capital.
Also Friday, the U.S. army said that fighting broke out between detainees at Iraq's largest U.S.-run prison, Camp Bucca, after the killing of an inamte inside the compund.
The U.S. holds 6,000 mainly Iraqi detainees at Camp Bucca, near the south-eastern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.
Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera television aired excerpts of a video early Friday showing a Pakistani embassy hostage kidnapped last weekend in Baghdad.
"He called on the Pakistani president, Pakistani foreign minister and the international community to intervene with his captors to release him," Al Jazeera said, adding the video contained no demands for his release.
The Qatar-based channel also said that hostage identified himself as Malik Mohammad Javed, and that his kidnappers said that he was the “the Pakistani consul in Iraq".
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said that Javed, deputy charge d'affaires at the Pakistani mission in Baghdad, went missing on April 9. Pakistani officials believe the captors’ motive is ransom, not politics.
On Wednesday, Al-Jazeera aired a video of an American businessman, who was kidnapped this week in Iraq. It said that the hostage asked his family and friends to urge the United States to negotiate with the "Iraqi national resistance", and that he demanded U.S. forces to pull out from Iraq.
President Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan, said that the U.S. won't negotiate with the kidnappers. "Our position is well known when it comes to negotiating. Obviously this is a sensitive matter,” he said.
Saddam Hussein’s human rights are being violated at “every moment”, his lawyers said.
Saddam Hussein’s human rights are being violated at “every moment” and he will not get a fair trial after being “demonized” by the United States, his lawyer, a former U.S. attorney general said.
In an interview with the MSNBC’s “The Abrams Report”, Ramsey Clark, a former attorney general under president Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s, defended his decision to represent Saddam at his trial.
"His human rights are violated every moment," Clark said.
"He has not seen a lawyer; he has not seen his family. He's kept completely incommunicado. And it's imperative that you in a crisis like this and cases of most importance that you fight hardest for human rights," he added.
Saddam's lawyers say that they have been denied access to the toppled leader and that they don’t even know where he is.
The lawyers also condemn plans to try Saddam in a U.S.-funded special court, saying that it is illegitimate.
"I'm here to say he's (Saddam) entitled to a fair trial," Clark said.
"I will tell you that he's been so thoroughly demonized that it's almost impossible to hope for a fair trial. He's been demonized for years and years. He's been demonized by the media of the United States and by the government of the United States overwhelmingly."
Clark, who said that he opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq "with all my heart and soul," joined Saddam’s defense team in December 2004. He visited the toppled leader in Baghdad in February 2003, just before the U.S.-led invasion.
U.S. occupation forces arrested Saddam in 2003 near his hometown of Tikrit. He is detained in a solitary confinement in a U.S. military detention in the Iraqi capital.
Last month, The Sun newspaper reported that Saddam will attend his trial in Baghdad confined in a small steel cage.
It said that the former Iraqi president will be sitting in a cage similar to the Iron Maiden which was used to transport the fictional character Hannibal Lector in the movie, Silence of The Lambs.
According to Iraqi officials, the trial of Saddam Hussein and some of his associates will start this Spring.
SECURITY FORCES: A series of attacks by insurgents, including bombings and drive-by shootings, left at least 11 people dead and wounded about 20, officials said
A pair of car bombs exploded near government offices in the Iraqi capital yesterday, killing 11 and wounding over 20 as insurgent attacks against the nation's nascent security forces left at least eight others dead countrywide.
The near-simultaneous explosions in a southeastern Baghdad neighborhood targeted one of the ministry's satellite offices, killing at least 11, an Interior Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
At least 20 people injured in the blast were taken to Yarmouk Teaching Hospital, doctors and witnesses said. Hospital staff said four policemen were among the wounded in the bombings, which shook central Baghdad and sent two plumes of smoke boiling into the sky.
Insurgents kept up attacks yesterday against Iraq's security services, forces which the US military says must be able to impose a level of calm in the country before US troops can depart.
Gunmen hit police patroling near the central Iraq city of Baqubah, killing one officer and wounding three, Lieutenant Colonel Muthafar al-Jubori said.
Iraqis carry a body away from the site of a suicide car bomb, which targeted an Iraqi police convoy near Baghdad University yesterday. Two suicide car bombers struck near the Tribal Council and the al-Hamra hotel, home to many foreign journalists, killing at least 11 people -- most of them policemen -- and injuring more than 30 others.
In the capital, attackers shot 1st Lieutenant Firas Hussein in the head and torso as he made his way to work at Iraq's intelligence service, police Major Mousa Abdul Karim said.
In Kirkuk, seven gunmen riding in two vehicles fired on the police station just south of Kirkuk shortly after dawn yesterday, killing five police officers and one civilian, police Brigadier Sarhat Qadir said.
Militant group Ansar al-Sunnah claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in an Internet posting that its "knights of Islam" attacked "renegade policemen doing their morning training." The claim couldn't be independently verified.
Ansar al-Sunnah also said it had teamed up with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq group for a day-earlier attack in Kirkuk -- an unusual mention of cooperation among Iraq's disparate and sometimes competing militant groups.
The Web posting, which couldn't be independently corroborated, said the Wednesday explosive device that killed 12 police was composed of three bombs buried under a decoy device -- a lure to draw policemen to the blast site.
In Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown 130km north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded outside a US military installation, injuring nine civilians and setting nearby houses ablaze, police Lieutenant Colonel Amer Ahmed said.
The US military said one US soldier and two Iraqi troops suffered injuries in the bomb blast -- but maintained there were no civilian casualties.
On Wednesday, an American was shown at gunpoint on a videotape aired by al-Jazeera television, two days after he was kidnapped from a water treatment plant near Baghdad. The station said he pleaded for his life and urged US troops to withdraw from Iraq.
In LaPorte, Indiana, a yellow ribbon was tied Wednesday around a tree outside Jeffrey Ake's one-story brick house, and an American flag fluttered on a pole from the home. The US Embassy said the man on the video appeared to be Ake, a contract worker who was kidnapped around noon Monday.
Ake -- the 47-year-old president and CEO of Equipment Express, a company that manufacturers bottled water equipment -- is the latest of more than 200 foreigners seized in Iraq in the past year.
The al-Jazeera tape showed a man sitting behind a desk with at least three assailants -- two hooded and one off-camera -- pointing assault rifles at him. Ake, wearing an open-collar shirt with rolled-up shirt sleeves, was sitting or kneeling behind a wooden desk and holding what appeared to be a passport. This story has been viewed 135 times.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two car bombs exploded yesterday only 100 yards from each other during a traffic jam, killing at least 15 Iraqis in the deadliest attack in the capital city since national elections Jan. 30.
The explosions appeared to target an Interior Ministry building and a six-car Iraqi police convoy, but most of those killed were civilians caught in morning traffic. The blast wounded 38 people.
There also were attacks in Baqouba and in Kirkuk, where insurgents launched mortar rounds and fired on an Iraqi police station, killing at least five officers.
Yesterday's violence punctuated several days of escalating attacks in Baghdad. Although U.S. casualties have fallen precipitously since February, Iraqi security forces and government officials have continued to be frequent targets for insurgent fighters.
The violence has disappointed many Iraqis who had hoped national elections and the formation of a government would help stabilize the country.
In statements posted on the Internet, Iraq's al-Qaida branch claimed responsibility for the twin bombs in Baghdad, according to The Associated Press.
The Baghdad bombs exploded along Jamia Street, a busy thoroughfare in southeastern Baghdad. The first thunderous explosion sent up a red pillar of fire that engulfed several cars, shattered windows and shook buildings.
Staccato gunfire crackled through the air as panicked private security guards and government forces stationed at the Interior Ministry facility fired randomly.
Seconds later, another bomb exploded about 100 yards away from the first blast, flinging at least two cars on their sides.
U.S. forces later destroyed a third bomb. Despite the carnage, Iraqi police officers said they were undeterred.
"I will stay as a freedom fighter until I lose my life!" said Heider Qassam, 24. "I want to destroy each and every USA Marine!"
The clear-up after one of Friday's Baghdad bombs Friday's bombs were the latest in a new wave of Baghdad attacks
Detainees at Iraq's largest US-run jail have rioted, and bombers in Baghdad attacked US and Iraqi convoys.
At least 12 people at Camp Bucca jail were hurt after the murder of one detainee sparked a mass brawl.
In Baghdad at least one civilian died and several others were hurt in a series of explosions, the US said.
A suicide car bomber attacked a US convoy in the western suburb of Mansour, and a bomb exploded in an eastern area, killing the civilian.
The attacks came the day after a double suicide car bombing in central Baghdad killed at least 15 people.
Double attack
At Camp Bucca, near the south-eastern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, the fighting was not directed at US guards or prison staff, the US military said in a statement.
According to the statement, a fight broke out between inmates after the murder of a man inside the compound.
Two weeks ago a large riot broke out at the camp. Rocks were thrown and tents were burned after word spread that a Shia supporter of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr had been denied medical treatment.
The US holds 6,000 mainly Iraqi detainees at Camp Bucca.
In Baghdad on Friday the US military confirmed that two separate convoys were attacked in different parts of the city.
In Mansour, an affluent area in western Baghdad, a suicide bomb intended for a US convoy killed the bomber and injured at least three civilians others, officials at a local hospital said.
Ten minutes later a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad exploded close to an Iraqi convoy, killing one civilian and wounding three, an interior ministry official told the AFP news agency.
BAGHDAD — An Indiana man, scared and clutching his passport to his chest, was shown at gunpoint on a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television Wednesday, two days after he was kidnapped from a water treatment plant near Baghdad. The station said he pleaded for his life and urged U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq.
The United States said it would maintain its policy of not negotiating with kidnappers.
In LaPorte, Ind, a yellow ribbon was tied around a tree outside Jeffrey Ake's one-story brick house, and an American flag fluttered on a pole from the home. The U.S. Embassy said the man on the video appeared to be Ake, a contract worker who was kidnapped around noon Monday.
The video came on a day of bloody attacks, as insurgents blew up a fuel tanker in Baghdad, killed 12 policemen in Kirkuk, and drove a car carrying a bomb into a U.S. convoy, killing five Iraqis and wounding four U.S. contract workers on the capital's infamous airport road.
Ake — the 47-year-old president and CEO of Equipment Express, a company that manufacturers bottled water equipment — is the latest of more than 200 foreigners seized in Iraq in the past year.
The Al-Jazeera tape showed a man sitting behind a desk with at least three assailants — two hooded and one off-camera — pointing assault rifles at him. Ake, wearing an open-collar shirt with rolled-up shirt sleeves, was sitting or kneeling behind a wooden desk and holding what appeared to be a photo and a passport.
The station didn't air audio of the video, but said the man asked the U.S. government to begin talks with the Iraqi resistance and save his life. No group claimed responsibility, and there was no way to authenticate the video. Al-Jazeera didn't say how it obtained the tape.
President George Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan, said there would be no negotiating with the kidnappers.
"Any time there is a hostage — an American hostage — it is a high priority for the United States," he said. "Our position is well known when it comes to negotiating. Obviously this is a sensitive matter."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said U.S. officials were thoroughly engaged with Iraqi officials and others in trying to secure the hostage's release.
"Obviously, the United States continues to hold to a policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists," Rice told reporters after meeting Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini. "It only encourages them."
In Indiana, LaPorte Police Chief David Gariepy met with Ake's family and called it "a terrible situation."
"We have to keep them in our thoughts and pray for his safe return," Gariepy said. "It devastates all of us as Americans when someone from our country is involved in something like this."
Ake's company had been working as part of the effort to rebuild Iraq. In 2003, Equipment Express built a machine that filled containers with cooking oil to be used by Iraqis. The company also built a system to provide water bottles to be sold in Baghdad.
Ake is one of at least 14 Americans who have been kidnapped or have gone missing in the past year in Iraq. At least three have been killed. Last April, Nicholas Berg, a 26-year-old businessman from West Chester, Pa, was the first to be kidnapped. He was beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq group.
One of the Americans still being held was kidnapped last month along with three Romanian journalists. The Romanian government said Wednesday it was in direct contact with their abductors, and that the four were being treated well.
Al-Qaida in Iraq said in an Internet statement that it carried out Wednesday's deadly car bombing, which the military said damaged two sport utility vehicles and five civilian cars. The explosion left charred and burning rubble strewn across the highway.
"A member of our martyrdom seekers' brigade mingled in an American military convoy at the airport road and exploded himself, destroying the infidels," said the statement, which could not be independently verified.
The car bomb was among four explosions in central Baghdad early Wednesday, the military said. The second was a car bombing that didn't cause any damage, and the third was a "secondary explosion" nearby, the military said.
The military gave no information on the fourth explosion, but twin blasts set a fuel tanker ablaze as it made its way through eastern Baghdad. Clouds of black smoke billowed from the site.
Near the northern city of Kirkuk, 12 policemen who had gathered to help dismantle an apparent decoy bomb were killed by another explosion Wednesday, police said. Three others were wounded.
Police Brig Sarhat Qadir said the explosion took place 10 miles northwest of Kirkuk as police were trying to cordon off the area. He said officials believed the bomb being dismantled was a decoy to draw in more police before the second bomb exploded.
The violence came as Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko signed a decree ordering his country's troops to leave Iraq by year's end, finalizing a decision that will pull out the fourth-largest non-U.S. contingent here. The withdrawal was one of the new president's campaign promises.
The Bush administration also moved Wednesday to freeze the finances of a Jordanian it says has provided financial support to al-Zarqawi. The U.S. government contends that Bilal Mansur al-Hiyari became acquainted with al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan in 1989.
And in Iraq, the U.S. military announced the April 6 arrest of Walid Jassim Muhammad Jurmat, an alleged member of the Saraya Al Jihad group, which has ties to al-Zarqawi. In a statement, the military said he was wanted for his connection to suicide car bombs, weapons and ammunition trafficking, as well as the organization of insurgent supply routes in and out of Ramadi.
BAGHDAD - A video broadcast has been aired by Al-Jazeera television showing an American contractor, kidnapped in Iraq earlier this week, pleading for his life.
Jeffrey Ake from Indiana, urged the U.S. government to withdraw from Iraq and to negotiate with his captors.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday the U.S. would do what it can to obtain Ake's release, but "the United States continues to hold the policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists, it only encourages them. But we are working very, very hard to try to secure the safety of the American there and we are unable to confirm anything past that because obviously it is an ongoing situation."
The video showed Ake holding up his passport as armed and masked insurgents stood at his side.
The group behind the kidnapping was not named.
More than 150 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq in the past year. About one-third have been killed.
Poland announced on Tuesday that it would withdraw all its troops from Iraq when the UN’s mandate there expires in December, news agencies reported.
Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said the country would withdraw its 1’700 troops by the end the year, but suggested that the mission could be extended along with the UN mandate.
The government of Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka has no plans to deploy news troops elsewhere, Szmajdzinski told reporters.
Along with Spain, Poland was one of the lead nations within the US-led coalition of 10’000 multinational forces in south-central Iraq. Spain pulled its troops out of Iraq last year after Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero won the elections. Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and the Netherlands have also withdrawn their troops from Iraq. Hungary’s mission there ends in December.
Poland was one of the staunchest supporters of the US-led invasion of Iraq. But public opinion changed when Pope John Paul II criticized the war. Corruption allegations and other scandals have also led to a decline in the popularity of Poland’s leftist government, which is expected to call general elections for this summer.
Despite the withdrawal of troops, Poland said it would continue to assist NATO with training Iraqi security officers in Iraq and elsewhere.
IRAQ: PAKISTANI ENVOY SENT TO SECURE RELEASE OF KIDNAPPED EMBASSY EMPLOYEE
Islamabad - A special envoy sent by Pakistan has been holding meetings with the Iraqi authorities over the safe recovery of an employee from its embassy in Baghdad who was kidnapped on Saturday night, according to Pakistan's interior minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao. The minister said the government was making all possible efforts to get Malik Javed released. He said the special envoy had called on the Iraqi prime minister, interior minister and senior officials and hoped that Malik Javed would be released soon.
Sherpao revealed that Malik Javed's captors had allowed him to talk to his family members in Pakistan twice since his abduction and he informed them that he was safe and sound.
He added that the kidnappers had made some demands for the safe release of Malik Javed, but was reluctant to give any details. He said the Iraqi government had fully cooperated with the special envoy sent by Pakistan's prime minister Shaukat Aziz.
Malik Muhammad Aslam, father of the kidnapped employee, said his son was innocent and demanded that he should be released soon. Mudassar and Bilal, Malik Javed sons, urged the government to ensure the safe release of their father.
Malik Javed, an assistant in the Pakistani mission in Iraq, was kidnapped on Saturday night while returning to his west Baghdad home from a mosque. A group known as Omar bin Khattab has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.
More than 150 foreigners have been taken hostage over the past year in Iraq, some of whom were killed.
Islamabad: Pakistan today said an official working in its embassy in Baghdad has been kidnapped by a militant group in Iraq. "Persons claiming to be members of Omar bin Khattab group have apparently kidnapped the official," the Foreign Office said in a statement.
Malik Muhammed Javed, an assistant at the Pakistan embassy in Baghdad, went missing yesterday after leaving home to offer prayers at a mosque, Foreign Office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani told reporters.
Javed had since then been in contact with the charge d'affaires Mohamed Iftikhar Anjum and said he is safe, the spokesman said.
He said the Pakistani Government was in touch with Iraqi Government and the family. Anjum was also in contact with the Iraqi Government and the local leaders to secure Javed's release.
"We are trying to get information about his whereabouts," the spokesman said.
When asked whether the US authorities have been approached, Jilani told APP news agency, "we have only contacted the Iraqi Government."
Pakistan Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said his government was making all efforts to get Javed released. "We are trying our best and are in constant touch with the Iraqi government for tracing his whereabouts."
He said the Iraqi ambassador in Islamabad was summoned to the Foreign Office and has been asked to ensure the safe return of the Pakistani official.
The gathering was the largest anti-US protest for months Tens of thousands of protesters have marched through Baghdad denouncing the US occupation of Iraq, two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Demonstrators loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr rallied in the square where the ousted Iraqi leader's statue was toppled in 2003.
The protest was the largest since the 30 January elections.
Earlier, insurgents killed 15 Iraqi soldiers travelling in a convoy south of the capital, police said.
'No to the occupiers'
Mr Sadr's supporters streamed from the Sadr City district to Firdos Square, where the statue was brought down on 9 April 2003, symbolically marking the end of Saddam Hussein's regime.
TWO YEARS ON More than 130,000 US troops remain in Iraq Unofficial estimates of civilian deaths range from at least 15,000 to almost 100,000 Iraqis face fuel shortages and have to buy essential goods at black market prices Unemployment is estimated at between 25% and 50%
Media debate anniversary Protesters chanted anti-Western slogans such as "No, no to the occupiers", and "No America! No Bush! Yes to Islam!"
The square was packed with demonstrators waving Iraqi flags and holding aloft effigies of US President George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Iraqi security forces kept watch, while US troops were out of sight. There were no reports of violence
"I came from Sadr City to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupation," one protester, named Abbas, was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.
"The Americans wanted time and we gave them time, now we want to rule ourselves," he said.
Moqtada Sadr did not attend the rally. He is believed to have remained in Najaf since agreeing a truce with the US following clashes between US-led forces and Mr Sadr's Mehdi Army militia last August.
'Triangle of death'
Earlier on Saturday, the bodies of 15 Iraqi soldiers were found near the town of Latifiya, in a lawless area known as the "triangle of death".
There are conflicting accounts of how the soldiers died.
Police in the nearby town of Mahmudiya told Reuters news agency that gunmen forced the soldiers' truck to stop before shooting and killing them.
However, an Iraqi defence ministry official told AFP news agency that they were blown up by a roadside bomb.
A Pakistani diplomat has been kidnapped in Iraq, officials in Islamabad say.
Malik Mohammed Javed disappeared on Saturday after going to a Baghdad mosque for evening prayers.
Pakistan's foreign ministry said his abduction had been claimed by the "Omar bin Khattab" group. He has contacted the embassy to say he is safe.
Many foreigners have been kidnapped since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Some have been killed and others freed after ransoms were paid.
Iraqis are also targeted by kidnap gangs, mainly for ransom.
But earlier this month an Iraqi general who commands a special armoured unit was abducted by gunmen in Baghdad. There has been no word yet on who may have taken Brig Gen Mohammad Jalal Saleh.
Last year, an Iranian diplomat was abducted as he travelled from Baghdad to start work in the Shia Muslim holy city of Karbala.
Fereidoun Jahani was released after seven weeks.
The first foreign diplomat to be captured was an Egyptian embassy official, held for three days last July.
Rebels kill 15 Iraqi Troops as Baghdad Stages Protest
Baghdad, While insurgents killed 15 Iraqi soldiers traveling in a convoy south of Baghdad, tens of thousands of Iraqis joined an anti-US protest in this capital, police and officials reported.
The rebel attack happened near the town of Latifiya, in the so-called "triangle of death". Details of the assault are still sketchy, with conflicting accounts of how the soldiers died.
The violence came on the second anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to the US-led coalition.
The Shiite protesters marked the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad with a protest against American troops at the same square where Saddam Hussein"s statue was toppled on 9 April 2003.
They filled Firdos Square and spilled onto nearby avenues, waving Iraqi flags. Mimicking the famous images of US soldiers and Iraqis pulling down a statue of Saddam as Baghdad fell, protesters toppled effigies of President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Saddam and chanted "No to America" and "No to the occupiers".
British intelligence chiefs have admitted for the first time that claims they made about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were wrong.
The admission is in the annual report of Britain's parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which also criticises the lack of communication between ministers and the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.
It discloses that late last year Britain's joint intelligence committee reviewed key judgements on Iraq's WMD capability and programs behind the Government's now discredited dossier published in September 2002. The committee then claimed that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. It now admits this was wrong.
In 2002, it said "Iraq retains up to 20 al-Hussein ballistic missiles" but now admits: "This has not been substantiated."
The committee had also claimed that "Iraq may retain some stocks of chemical agents . . . Iraq could produce significant quantities of mustard (gas) within weeks". It now admits: "Although a capability to produce some agents probably existed, this judgement has not been substantiated."
The committee also said in 2002 that Iraq had biological agents and could produce more within days. It now says that the Iraq Survey Group found Iraq could resume production, "but not within the time frames" and found no evidence that production had started.
The parliamentary committee notes that three MI6 agents were "withdrawn" after the Iraq invasion.
The committee also referred to the Butler inquiry, which described the MI6 agent behind the claim that Iraq could deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes as "seriously flawed".
An Iraqi apparently suspected by US troops of taking part in attacks in Baghdad accused US forces of taking his mother and sister hostage to pressure him and his brothers into surrendering for questioning.
A US military spokesman in Baghdad said he doubted the accusation and was not aware of such an incident. But neighbours interviewed around Arkan Mukhlif al-Batawi's villa in the capital's Sunni Arab suburb of Taji corroborated his account.
If true, the troops would have offended local sensibilities about the treatment of women; Amnesty International said they could also have broken international law by taking hostages.
Batawi, who spoke to Reuters at the offices of a leading group of Sunni clerics, said US soldiers searched his home on Saturday. When they found neither him nor two brothers also on the wanted list, they arrested his mother and sister, he said.
A message purportedly left at the house by the troops, which urged the brothers to surrender, contained a mobile telephone number. This was answered by an American soldier who appeared to be aware of Batawi's accusation but declined further comment.
"Last Saturday morning, about 20 Humvees (military vehicles) surrounded our house and neighbouring houses and when they failed to find us they took our mother and sister," said Batawi, who spent more than a year in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail after the US invasion but denies any link to Iraq's insurgency.
He said he was not sure why the troops wanted to arrest him and his brothers, Muhammad and Saddam, again. But he believed they suspected them of involvement in insurgent attacks. All three were released in August from Abu Ghraib, which became notorious last year for abuses of prisoners by US troops.
"Give yourself up"
A handwritten sign in Arabic on the front gate of their house read: "Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters.
"Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention."
It was signed "Bandit 6", apparently US Army code, possibly designating a company commander.
When Reuters called the mobile telephone number at the bottom of the message, an American answered, saying he was on a military patrol. Asked about Batawi's accusation, he said: "I can't comment on that. The commander will call you back."
Hours later, a second call elicited the same response before the American, who would not identify himself, hung up.
The US 3rd Infantry Division is active in the area.
A spokesman at US headquarters in Iraq, who also declined to give his name, said he could neither confirm nor deny the incident. He said he did not find Batawi's account "plausible".
Three neighbours of the Batawi home did corroborate the accusation. They said US troops, accompanied by Iraqi police, had arrested Batawi's 65-year-old mother and a sister who is 35.
"The Americans attacked the house of the Batawi family. They were searching for the brothers. When they could not find them they took the women," said one neighbour, Kamal Abbas.
"Through a translator they told us that they will release the women when the men surrender."
Batawi, who says his occupation is farming his land around Taji, said he and his brothers were imprisoned in 2003 on charges of attacking US forces and planning armed assaults.
Neighbours angry
He said he would be willing to give himself up again if the Americans provided guarantees that his mother and sister would be freed. He and his brothers had sought the assistance of the Muslim Clerics Association, the main voice of Iraq's Sunni Arabs, in trying to resolve the situation.
"My brothers and I never attacked American forces before.
"But if they do not release our mother and sister we will be ready to attack them wherever they are," he said.
Near his home, another neighbour, Ali Jassem, said: "If they want the men they should take the men. Arresting women is not accepted by God... Our tribal traditions reject such acts. Where are you, the advocates of democracy?"
Many Iraqis accuse American soldiers of heavy-handed tactics in their fight against mainly Sunni insurgents. US commanders insist they do their best to avoid harming civilians.
There have been reports of US commanders acknowledging they have taken relatives of fugitives into custody. While questioning relatives is seen as legitimate among police forces worldwide, holding them as hostages is not.
At Amnesty International, the London-based human rights lobby group, Middle East spokeswoman Nicole Choueiry said of Batawi's case: "I do not think it is the first time."
"We are against it. It is against international law to take civilians and use them as bargaining chips."
The US military claimed a fresh victory in its offensive against Iraq's insurgency yesterday, striking a militant hideout with helicopter gunships and artillery.
But the insurgents kidnapped a senior Iraqi general, one of their most notable coups in the past two years, and detonated bombs across the country.
US troops in Iraq US troops deploy in Baghdad after an explosion
The violence seemed typical of the seesaw security situation recently. US gains in the coalition's struggle to impose its authority were balanced by setbacks elsewhere. Two Iraqi battalions mounted an operation to search for weapons in eastern Diyala province on Monday but insurgents returned fire from well-entrenched positions. Fighting lasted most of yesterday.
As the Iraqis became bogged down, US Bradley fighting vehicles moved in to reinforce the assault. Two American infantrymen were killed but no details of rebel casualties were released.
Forty US servicemen were killed in March, the lowest monthly total since February last year, as rebels focused attacks on members of the Iraqi security forces. But a senior American officer said that the fighters had again stepped up attacks on coalition targets this week.
Nine US soldiers have been killed in five days and 44 were hurt in an assault on Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad at the weekend.
There has been no respite in attacks against Iraqi military targets. Gunmen dragged Gen Jalal Mohammed Saleh, the commander of the interior ministry's armoured brigade, and his bodyguards from their cars in the Baghdad suburb of Mansur.
Insurgents are holding dozens of foreigners but most of the seized are Iraqis. The interior ministry said that 5,000 Iraqi citizens had been taken hostage since the end of the war was declared two years ago but many had been freed after ransoms were paid.
Al-Qa'eda's wing in Iraq released a video of a young Iraqi soldier being beheaded. A second group posted footage of the execution of another Iraqi serviceman.
A U.S. military convoy was attacked in Baghdad, one GI was killed and others wounded. An Iraqi general who commands a special armoured unit has been kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad, Iraqi police have reported. Brigadier General Mohammad Jalal Saleh was pulled from his car along with his bodyguards in the west of the city.
General Saleh commands a 1,600-strong interior ministry unit formed to deal with anti-occupation fighters and criminal gangs and it was one of the first armoured units to be reassembled after the war and the dissolution of the army. No group has yet claimed to have abducted Gen Saleh, who commands the interior ministry's Eighth Mechanised Police Brigade. According to an interior ministry official, the general was seized from the upmarket Mansour district.
Though the kidnapping of foreign aid workers and journalists get the most international attention, Iraqis are very frequent targets and are usually abducted for ransom. Meanwhile, different areas of Baghdad were rocked by car bombs early Tuesday. The first in the southern Doura district targeted a U.S. military convoy killing a U.S. soldier and wounding four others. At least one injured Iraqi civilian was taken to Yarmouk hospital.
The second blast in the western Amariyah district killed a civilian and wounded two others. Reports say it was aimed at an Iraqi army convoy carrying a high-ranking officer who escaped unhurt. The spokesman for the U.S. Task Force Baghdad Sgt. 1st Class David Abrams said an abandoned taxi exploded as the U.S. patrol drove down an expressway in the Dora neighborhood. He said one of the wounded soldiers had minor injuries, but no further details were given on the others.
While another explosion targeted a joint Iraqi-U.S. convoy in the Amiriyah neighborhood in Baghdad, said al-Amil police officer Capt. Talib Thamir. One policeman was killed and two others were injured when a roadside bomb hit their car in the southern city of Basra, police Col. Karim al-Zeidi said. Also Tuesday, the U.S. military said a U.S. Marine was killed on Monday by an explosion in the sprawling, western province of Anbar.
U.S. forces in Iraq are “too heavy-handed” – UK panel
U.S. forces in Iraq are provoking civilians by using extensive force, British MPs said.
U.S. forces in Iraq are provoking civilians and hindering reconstruction efforts by using extensive force, a British parliamentary committee said in a report Tuesday.
"Excessive use by the U.S. forces of overwhelming firepower has also been counterproductive, provoking antagonism toward the coalition among ordinary Iraqis," the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said in its report, reiterating the concerns of several British officials.
Many British officials have privately complained that U.S. troops are too heavy-handed in Iraq, compared with UK troops, whom they say often patrol on foot and in berets instead of helmets in an attempt to win the trust of Iraqi civilians.
The committee, representing three parties, also said that the heavy-handed policy has led to the slow pace of reconstruction which had strengthened the Iraqi resistance. It also suggested that Iraq had replaced Afghanistan as a training ground for international fighters who play a leading and deadly role in the war-torn country.
However, it said that most fighters are local Iraqis who “have been dispossessed by policies adopted by the coalition since the war, such as de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi security forces,''
It added that the occupation forces had clearly failed to curb the violence and said that the new Iraqi government should try to negotiate with the fighters.
"We conclude that to date the counter-insurgency strategy has not succeeded. This may reflect an overriding focus on a military approach to the detriment of political engagement ...
"While negotiations with al-Qaeda and foreign fighters are out of the question, it might be possible to address some of the Iraqi insurgents' grievances through political negotiations," the report said.
The findings are similar to those of other parliamentary reports that have criticized the poor post-war planning in Iraq.
The committee, which investigates Britain’s foreign policy, also criticized the British government. It said that ministers had clearly failed to say whether or not Britain had used intelligence obtained under torture from suspects detained in other countries.
"We find it surprising and unsettling that the government has twice failed to answer our specific question on whether or not the United Kingdom receives or acts upon information extracted under torture by a third country," said the report.
The panel also said that the ministers should do something about the illegal detentions in Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there was a "lack of due process and oppressive conditions."
All three Romanian journalists were seized on 28 March
Romanian authorities have rejected as "rumours" television reports that three journalists kidnapped in Iraq had been freed.
"We would have no reason to keep such information secret if it was true," said Adriana Saftoiu, a spokeswoman for the president's office.
Journalist Marie-Jeanne Ion and her cameraman Eduard Ohanesian from Prima TV and Sorin Miscoci of the Romanian daily Libera, were taken hostage 28 March along with their guide, Iraqi-American Mohamed Munaf, on the outskirts of Baghdad.
A video of the visibly frightened hostages was broadcast 30 March by Aljazeera.
Two Romanian television stations, Antena 1 and Pro TV, earlier on Tuesday reported that the three had been released, quoting official sources.
A third channel, Realitatea TV, quoting sources in Baghdad, later reported the journalists were "safe and well" and "in the hands of the coalition forces".
Credence
"Romania is for the first time confronted with a situation of this type, which is why the media have a tendency to give credence to rumours," Saftiou said.
"The release of the journalists will be announced when it happens. It would be fantastic to be able to announce it tomorrow [Wednesday], but it is not certain," she said.
Earlier, she had said that operations aimed at recovering the journalists were underway, but that "any further information would put (these operations) at risk."
The reports of their release came as the arrest was announced of a Syrian-Romanian businessman who said he had been in contact with the kidnappers.
"A Syrian-Romanian, Umar Haysam, was arrested this afternoon [Tuesday] on the request of prosecutors," said Saftoiu.
On 29 March, Hayssam had told Romanian television stations that he had been "contacted by the kidnappers", who had demanded an undisclosed ransom, which he had refused.
Hayssam is close to the Iraqi-American businessman, Muhammad Munaf, who was kidnapped at the same time as the three Romanians.
But Romanian media had later questioned Hayssam's credibility.
Checkpoints are often targeted by fighters using car bombs
Two car bombs targeting US and Iraqi security forces have exploded in different parts of Baghdad, killing three people, police say.
The shock wave from the first blast near the international airport on Tuesday shook nearby buildings and was heard across the southwestern part of the capital.
Police said two civilians were killed in the blast.
Another car bomb exploded in the path of a US military convoy in al-Dura area south of Baghdad, Aljazeera reported.
A US Humvee and a civilian car were destroyed in the explosion.
A US soldier was killed in the incident, the army said.
One civilian was injured and brought to Yarmuk hospital in western Baghdad, a medical source said. Another person was reported to have been killed, but no further details were provided.
US forces cordoned off the area, while Iraqi forces prevented anyone from approaching it.
Intense battle
In other incidents, an Iraqi soldier and two US soldiers were killed on Monday in an intense battle with fighters northeast of Baghdad, the US military said on Tuesday.
Attacks on US forces have fallen to 50 a day in recent weeks
"Coalition forces and Iraqi army soldiers encountered and attacked terrorist forces in a remotely populated region east of Baghdad at about 4pm (1200 GMT) on 4 April," a US military statement said.
A US marine was killed in action on Monday in Iraq's Anbar province west of Baghdad, the US military also said.
The marine was killed by "an explosion which occurred during combat operations".
In related news, police sources said a general in the Iraqi army had been abducted.
An Interior Ministry source said Brigadier-General Jalal Muhammad Salih and his bodyguards were pulled from his car by an armed group in the Mansur district of the capital at 11.30am (0730 GMT).
He was the commander in charge of the ministry's 1600-strong armoured brigade.
Bodies found
Iraqi police have found the corpses of 10 Iraqi soldiers buried in the Jurf al-Sakhr area, south of Baghdad, Aljazeera reported.
Corpses of executed Iraqi soldiers are routinely found in Iraq
In Hilla, armed men killed a member of the Babil provincial council, Salim Hilal, as he was heading to work, Babil provincial police spokesman Captain Muthana Khalid said.
He said two suspects in the attack were arrested.
In the central city of Baquba, armed men wounded a government translator and killed her father in a drive-by shooting, Brigadier-General Adil Mulan of the Diala provincial police department said.
Prison riot
The US army has issued a statement revealing details of a riot at one of the prisons it runs in southern Iraq.
Inmates at Camp Bucca - the largest US-run prison in Iraq - hurled rocks and set tents on fire earlier this month, and four guards and 12 prisoners were wounded before the riot was brought under control on 1 April.
"During the disturbance, the detainees chanted, threw rocks and set several of their tents on fire"
US Army statement It said prisoners in one compound protested about the transfer of detainees to another compound.
"During the disturbance, the detainees chanted, threw rocks and set several of their tents on fire," an army statement said.
"The disturbance was brought under control with only minor injuries to four guards and 12 detainees."
Last month, prison guards foiled a jailbreak by finding two tunnels dug under the ground at Camp Bucca. One of the tunnels had cleared the perimeter fence of the prison.
In January, US guards shot and killed four inmates during a riot at the same camp.
BAGHDAD -- Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and detonated two car bombs yesterday while attacking the Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad, wounding 44 US forces and 12 prisoners, the US military said.
The attack, carried out by 40 to 60 militants, began as darkness fell on the city, First Lieutenant Adam Rondeau said. Soldiers and Marines stationed at the detention facility responded, and the resulting clash lasted about 40 minutes, Rondeau said.
The US military today said some of the injuries were serious.
''This was obviously a very well-organized attack and a very big attack," Rondeau said.
Officials had said that overall attacks have been declining in Iraq, but they also had noted that insurgents seem to be focusing efforts on bigger, better organized operations.
Since US forces took control of the prison, insurgents frequently have lobbed mortar rounds inside but not engaged in the type of head-on assault that took place yesterday. Insurgents typically have preferred to remain hidden, working in small groups or on suicide missions, and attacking from afar with mortar rounds and rockets.
The attack yesterday was one of the largest against US forces anywhere in Iraq since the Jan. 30 Iraqi national elections.
It wasn't immediately known whether any of the insurgents were arrested or suffered casualties. Plumes of smoke were seen rising from the area.
Abu Ghraib was at the center of a prisoner abuse scandal that was revealed in 2004. Pictures showing US soldiers piling naked inmates in a pyramid and humiliating them sexually became public and outraged Iraqis.
The resulting scandal tarnished the military's image worldwide and sparked investigations of detainee abuses.
The United States is holding about 10,500 prisoners in Iraq.
Also yesterday, a car bomb exploded in central Iraq, killing five people, including four police officers on patrol, while gunmen killed an education official in Baghdad.
The car bomb in Khan Bani Saad, near the troubled city of Baqouba in central Iraq, also injured two police officers and three civilians, provincial police Colonel Mudafar al-Jubori said.
In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire from a car, killing Hassib Zamil outside of the Education Ministry offices in the Sadr City neighborhood, education official Ibrahim Abid Wali said.
A US Marine was killed Friday while conducting security operations in Ramadi, the military said yesterday.
As of Friday, at least 1,532 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Also yesterday, the US military praised an edict issued by Sunni clerics that called for Iraqis to join police and army forces, saying it was a sign that people were fed up with the insurgency. But the statement added that enlistees ''must be prepared to serve all the people."
The edict, read by a cleric in the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, instructed enlistees to refrain from helping foreign troops against their own countrymen and said the move was designed to prevent security forces from falling into ''the hands of those who have caused chaos, destruction, and violated the sanctities."
The announcement, endorsed by a group of 64 Sunni clerics and scholars, could help the government boost the image of security forces struggling to fight the insurgency.
For months, Sunni clerics had warned minority Sunnis, who were dominant under Hussein, against cooperating with Iraqi police and soldiers.
Car bomb in central Iraq kills five; Marine killed in Ramadi
BAGHDAD — A car bomb exploded Saturday in central Iraq, killing five people, including four police officers on patrol, while gunmen killed an education official in Baghdad. A U.S. Marine was killed in Ramadi, the military said Saturday.
The car bomb in Khan Bani Saad, near the troubled city of Baqouba in central Iraq, also injured two police officers and three civilians, said provincial police Col. Mudafar al-Jubori.
In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire from a car, killing Hassib Zamil outside Education Ministry offices in the Sadr City neighborhood, education official Ibrahim Abid Wali said.
Lawmakers remained deadlocked on which candidate should take the job as parliament speaker, one day before their third session of the newly elected National Assembly. A group of Sunni leaders has nominated the Sunni Arab legislator Meshaan al-Jubouri, but it wasn't clear if he had the backing of the entire Sunni community or lawmakers from other coalitions.
In Tikrit, thousands of supporters of al-Jubouri assembled in a stadium to support his candidacy.
Some have also called for naming the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as Iraq's new president during Sunday's session, a step that would bring Iraq closer to forming a new government.
The U.S. military said the Marine was killed Friday by enemy fire in Ramadi. The Marine was assigned to the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force.
As of Friday, at least 1,532 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
On Friday, cleric Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars read an edict during morning prayers calling for Iraqis to join the new police and army forces.
The announcement, endorsed by a group of 64 Sunni clerics and scholars, could help the new government boost the image of security forces struggling to fight the insurgency. For months, Sunni clerics had warned minority Sunnis, who were dominant under Saddam Hussein, against cooperating with Iraqi police and soldiers.
The edict, however, instructed enlistees to refrain from helping foreign troops against their own countrymen and said the move was designed to prevent security forces from falling into "the hands of those who have caused chaos, destruction and violated the sanctities."
In the central city of Samarra, an explosion Friday blew away part of a wall on top of a minaret from a ninth-century mosque.
The U.S. military blamed insurgents, but it was unclear why the minaret — one of Iraq's most recognized landmarks — was targeted. American troops have used it as a sniper position, and last year the terrorist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, flew a flag from its peak.
Also Friday, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who led uprisings against the U.S.-led coalition last year, called on his supporters to stage a protest in Baghdad on April 9 marking the date two years ago when U.S. troops entering the capital.
Sheik Hassan al-Edhari, an official at al-Sadr's Baghdad office, said the protesters will demand that the new Iraqi government set a timetable for withdrawing foreign troops and for trying Saddam.
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