BAGHDAD, 23 May 2004 — A car bomb outside the home of a deputy interior minister wounded him and killed at least five people here yesterday.
Abdul Jabbar Youssef Al-Sheikhli, the deputy minister in charge of security, was slightly injured in the forehead and right arm, said Hassan Hadi, a Health Ministry official. “I expect he will leave the hospital in a short time,” Hadi said.
Al-Sheikhli is a member of the Dawa party, which lost a prominent member this week in another fatal car bombing. On Monday, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Dawa member Izzedin Salim, was killed along with at least six other people near the headquarters of the US-run coalition in the capital.
Jama’a Al-Tawhid and Jihad, headed by Al-Qaeda-linked figure Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for both attacks.
Also yesterday, the military said a US soldier was killed and three others were wounded in an attack on their vehicle south of Baghdad. It said the soldier’s vehicle was “ambushed by a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device” in Mahmoudiyah, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad. The statement did not say when the attack occurred.
Meanwhile, coalition troops and militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr left the center of Karbala. More than a month after Sadr launched an uprising in Iraq, Ali Al-Kazali, a high-ranking member of Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia said fighters had laid down their arms.
No military presence, either armed militiamen, or coalition troops could be seen in the center of the city. The US military conceded it had moved its troops but objected to the term “withdrawal.”
“We’ve repositioned some forces inside of Karbala but it’s quite a stretch to consider that to be anything remotely resembling a withdrawal,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of military operations, said.
— Additional input from agencies
