BAGHDAD, 23 March 2005 — Hooded insurgents opened fire yesterday along a main Baghdad thoroughfare and shopkeepers and residents responded by pulling out their own guns and killing three assailants, the latest blow to an insurgency that has been trying to organize larger ambushes in recent days.
Late Monday in the northern city of Mosul, 17 militants were killed and 14 more were detained during an assassination attempt against top police officials, deputy police commander Col. Wathiq Ali said. That followed a large-scale ambush on a US patrol southeast of Baghdad on Sunday that left 26 insurgents dead and eight more in custody.
The clash between residents and rebels in Baghdad’s southern Doura neighborhood began when militants drove by in three cars, spraying passers-by with bullets. Three people — a man, a woman and a child — were injured.
The motive for the attack in a neighborhood that has previously been targeted was unclear. Earlier, gunmen in the same quarter killed a policeman as he drove to work, said police Lt. Col. Hafidh Al-Ghrayri.
The citizen response wasn’t unheard of in a country where conflict has become commonplace and the law allows each residence to have a weapon. This month, townsmen in Wihda, about 40 kilometers south of Baghdad, attacked a group of militants, killing seven, said police Capt. Hamadi Al-Zubeidy. The militants were believed to have been planning to raid the town.
Also yesterday, a seven-member US congressional delegation visited Baghdad to monitor the country’s progress, and the man expected to serve as Iraq’s next prime minister, Shiite politician Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, reportedly told the group he was in no hurry to have US troops pull out of his embattled nation.
US Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California and a vocal opponent of the war, said Al-Jaafari didn’t seem as “upbeat as our people, who seem to be very excited about the quality of the Iraqi police force.”
“My sense was, he was certainly in no rush to hand over security to his new police force,” she said.
Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, agreed, saying it was “too early to leave. It’s too early to declare success.”
But Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, expressed a “quiet optimism” about the future of Iraq during the lawmakers’ one-day visit.
In a statement yesterday, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi urged the nation’s new National Assembly to speed negotiations toward a new government “so as to resume the operation of rebuilding Iraq in all fields.”
Seeking to seal a political deal after Jan. 30 elections, the Shiite-clergy’s spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, was expected to meet today with Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader likely to become Iraq’s next president.
The Kurds want the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk to be returned to the autonomous Kurdistan region immediately after the government convenes, but an official from Al-Sistani’s office said the spiritual leader wants the country’s new National Assembly to decide that in Iraq’s future constitution.
Ousted ex-dictator Saddam Hussein conducted ethnic cleansing in Kirkuk and the surrounding region, driving Kurds from their homes and replacing them with Iraqi Arabs.
Iraqi commandos backed by US ground and air fire attacked an apparent insurgent training camp in eastern Iraq, killing an “undetermined number” of the rebels, the US military said.
— With input from agencies
