SAMARRA, Iraq, 2 April 2005 — Insurgents gunned down an Iraqi police chief and blew up the top of a centuries-old minaret yesterday as Sunni Arab leaders feuded over their role in a government still a long way from being finalized. In a surprise development, Sunni clerics issued a fatwa, or religious edict, encouraging their people to join the country’s armed forces.
The police chief of the tense town of Baladruz northeast of Baghdad, Col. Hatem Rashid, was killed by gunmen overnight in the latest assassination of top army and police officers. In the restive city of Samarra, north of Baghdad five gunmen, including four Syrians, were killed in clashes with US and Iraqi forces, Maj. Gen. Rashid Flaih of the Iraqi police commandos said, adding that 12 suspects were captured and weapons seized. The local hospital said it received five bodies.
This came after the top layer of the towering 9th-century spiral minaret of the Ma’awiya Mosque in Samarra, a national archaeological treasure, was damaged in a blast that occurred just two weeks after the departure US troops stationed there. Samarra continues to be an insurgent battleground as Iraqi and US forces press efforts to rid the mainly Sunni Arab city of insurgents. A car bomb in the city centre on Thursday killed seven people.
The Romanian government, meanwhile, scrambled to secure the release of three of its nationals taken hostage in Iraq. New photographs of the three journalists who went missing earlier in the week were shown on Romanian television after the trio and their US-Iraqi guide were shown late Wednesday on Al-Jazeera television cowering under the pointed rifles of two masked man.
“We are making an enormous effort, unprecedented for the Romanian state,” said Foreign Minister Razvan Ungureanu, whose government has 800 soldiers deployed in Iraq. Amid the continuing violence, Iraq’s main political blocs were still far from forming a government two months after landmark elections.
The main stumbling block is a desire by Shiites and Kurds alike to include the embittered Sunni Arab community, which largely boycotted the elections. The Kurds are also keen for the secular bloc of outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to join a new governing coalition to temper the influence of the religious parties that dominate the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
“We are still looking forward to participation but according to our terms,” Qassim Daoud, a member of Allawi’s list, told AFP. Daoud said negotiators were meeting regularly with Shiites and Kurds and that the focus was still on nailing agreement on common principles rather than the distribution of Cabinet posts.
