BAGHDAD, 25 February 2005 — Insurgents attacked a police station in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit yesterday, killing 15 policemen and injuring 22. A man wearing a police uniform drove a car full of explosives inside the police station, setting off the massive explosion.
The attack and other violence around Iraq left at least 28 people, including two US soldiers, dead.
In the capital, gunmen opened fire on a bakery in eastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding a third, police said. Several blasts echoed through the city at midday. Their cause was not immediately known.
The blast in Tikrit, 130 km north of Baghdad, occurred at one of the station’s busiest times, when dozens of policemen were arriving to relieve colleagues who had been working all night, police Col. Saad Daham said. “He waited until the shift change, then he exploded the car,” Daham said, adding the aim was “to kill as many as possible.”
Daham said the attacker was able to slip into the station undetected because he was wearing a police lieutenant’s uniform. He blamed guards at the station’s gates for allowing the bomber to enter without checking his papers or searching his vehicle.
Twenty cars were set ablaze after the massive blast, sending clouds of smoke into the sky. Several ambulances raced to the blast site, ferrying casualties to a local hospital. US troops sealed off the area, and set up checkpoints and searched vehicles across the city.
The US command said two American soldiers were killed and two wounded in bomb attacks yesterday, one northeast of Baghdad in Qaryat, a second near Samarra, west of Qaryat.
The violence came a day after interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced he was forming a coalition to try to hold onto his post in the next government and block the candidate of the dominant Shiite political alliance. Kurdish parties also weighed in with demands for top posts, setting up a possible showdown over the role of religion in a new Iraq.
Allawi’s call for an inclusive coalition that would attract minority Sunni Arabs who form the core of the insurgency came as support for Ibrahim Jaafari, the leading Shiite candidate, began slipping in his United Iraq Alliance.
One day after Jaafari, 58, was nominated for the post of prime minister by the clergy-backed alliance, a Shiite political group that supports his one-time challenger, Ahmad Chalabi, threatened to withdraw its support.
The Shiite Political Council demanded that the alliance make amends after forcing Chalabi to end his pursuit of the prime minister’s post by nominating one of the council’s members for the largely ceremonial post of Iraqi president. But the Kurdish coalition controlling 75 of the 275 seats in the National Assembly has long taken for granted that the alliance, which has 140 seats, will give the presidency to one of their leaders — Jalal Talabani. Allawi’s ticket won 40 seats.
“Regarding the nomination for the presidential post, no names were presented officially and we are running nonofficial discussions with all parties, especially with the Kurdish officials here in Baghdad,” Jaafari spokesman Abdul Razaq Al-Kadhimi said.
The Kurds also issued a separate list of demands that include reinforcing autonomy in their northern provinces.
A two-thirds majority of the assembly is required for approval of the presidency — the first step in a complicated process of filling the top positions. What this boils down to is that for Jaafari to become prime minister, he must win the approval of his own Shiite alliance, including Chalabi’s supporters, and an additional 44 legislators.
The next prime minister will oversee the drafting of a new constitution, and some fear Jaafari could lead Iraq toward an Islamic theocracy, or even a strictly sectarian Shiite one.
— Additional input from agencies
