BAGHDAD, 12 October 2003 — Hundreds marched yesterday to back a shadow Cabinet formed by anti-US firebrand Moqtada Sadr after three Iraqis were killed in attacks and the US army launched sweeps in Saddam Hussein’s stronghold.
An Iraqi officer was killed and six policemen were wounded yesterday in a hand grenade attack near the town of Karbala south of Baghdad, police spokesman Rahman Mashawi Zhiab told reporters, adding that three men were later detained in the area.
The attack came after the killing Friday of two employees of an Iraqi state-owned oil company and a sabotage explosion that started a large fire on an oil pipeline in the north. The two Northern Oil Co. workers were killed in a roadside bombing that wounded four others, according to the company’s director general, Adel Ghazzaz.
The explosion ripped through a company bus on the road between Baiji and the town of Riyadh, 40 kilometers west of Kirkuk.
In the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, 180 kilometers south of Baghdad, hundreds of people took to the streets yesterday to express support for the shadow Cabinet announced by Sadr.
The crowd gathered in front of his office next to the Imam Ali shrine in central Najaf, an AFP correspondent said. “We are ready to sacrifice our souls for you, Sadr,” chanted the demonstrators as they roamed the streets of the city.
“We are against the American occupation forces and we back everything that Moqtada Sadr says,” Mohammad Hassan Al-Rumaissi, one of the demonstrators, told AFP. The demonstrators were responding to a call by Sadr during his weekly sermon in the nearby town of Kufa, in which he announced the formation of a shadow Cabinet.
“I have decided and I have formed a government made up of several ministries, including ministries of justice, finance, information, interior, foreign affairs, (religious) endowments and the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice,” the young cleric said.
“If you agree, I ask you to demonstrate peacefully in order to express your support.” Sadr, a radical who heads the thousands-strong Mehdi Army militia, was ignored by the US-led coalition in the formation of Iraq’s interim Governing Council on which he is not represented.
On the ground, US troops hunting Iraqi guerrillas raided houses in Saddam Hussein’s hometown yesterday, arresting four men including two who officers said were former members of the fugitive dictator’s security force. Backed by Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, the soldiers burst into three homes in Tikrit. They battered down the doors of two of the houses but met no resistance from those inside.
Troops seized AK-47 rifles and ammunition, a range-finder and flare pistols, along with uniforms and electrical wiring, which the soldiers said might be used in bomb making.
Lt. Col. Steve Russell, who led the raid, said those detained were suspected of involvement in attacks on US forces and included two men with links to the Special Security Office, one of Saddam’s security units. “Four people were detained last night (Friday) in Qadisiya suburb of Tikrit and are being questioned,” said Lt. Col. Bill MacDonald, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division based in the Tikrit area.
“I cannot get specific because they are still under questioning, but we suspect them to be linked to organizing, financing and recruiting activities, (rather) than being mere foot-soldiers.”
The Tikrit area is at the heart of the “Sunni triangle” from where most anti-coalition attacks are being launched.
Overnight sweeps by the US Army in the flash point town of Baqubah north of Baghdad also led to the arrest of 10 Iraqis, including a local official of the disbanded Baath party, witnesses told AFP yesterday.
The US forces raided the Al-Tahrir neighborhood in central Baqubah, the site of frequent skirmishes between US troops and gunmen since the country fell to the US-led coalition on April 9, they said.
Baqubah was the scene of a grenade attack against an Iraqi police station early Friday that left four policemen wounded. US forces later arrested 15 people in searches at Al-Mafrak, west of Baqubah.
In a separate development, a domestic oil pipeline in northern Iraq was hit by fire, an Oil Ministry source said yesterday, but there was no impact on the export line to Turkey.
Facing daily attacks and mounting financial costs in Iraq, Washington is pushing for a new Security Council resolution giving the United Nations a broader mandate to try to persuade reluctant countries to help shoulder the burden of stabilizing the country.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell promised a final push to secure a new resolution and said it could be clear by next week if this was in reach.
“We are trying to listen, take into account what we are hearing and bring the community back together around the resolution, and I will know early next week how successful that effort has been,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the United Nations cannot play a political role in Iraq under the terms envisaged in the current draft US resolution. France and Russia have also criticized the draft, saying it should include a road map for a faster handover of power to a sovereign Iraqi government.
Controversy over the UN resolution has also cast doubts on a planned donors conference for Iraq, scheduled to be held in Madrid on Oct. 23-24. But the State Department said the conference would go ahead. “I have no reason to think that there is any discussion of postponing this,” a spokesman said.
