BAGHDAD, 7 October 2005 — Insurgents using suicide and roadside bombs killed at least 13 people, including a US soldier, and wounded 19 yesterday in the latest of a series of attacks aimed at wrecking Iraq’s constitutional referendum next week.
The attacks came as Iraqis began picking up copies of the draft constitution that they will vote on Oct. 15 after the country’s Shiite-led parliament ended a bitter dispute with Sunni Arabs about how the referendum will be conducted.
Under US and UN pressure, parliament Wednesday reversed its last-minute electoral law changes, which would have ensured passage of the new constitution but which the United Nations called unfair.
Sunni Arab leaders who had threatened a boycott because of the changes said they were satisfied with Wednesday’s reversal and are now mobilizing to defeat the charter at the polls. But some warned they could still call a boycott to protest major US offensives launched in the past week in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland.
Yesterday’s two deadliest attacks in Baghdad involved suicide car bombers.
One hit a police patrol near the Oil Ministry, killing nine Iraqis and wounding nine, police said. The attack occurred in eastern Baghdad, about 400 yards from the ministry, police Capt. Nabil Abdul Qadir said. The dead included five policemen and four civilians, and the wounded four policemen and five civilians, he said.
Earlier, in Karrada, another part of eastern Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded near a convoy of private security contractors, killing three bystanders and wounding six others, police Maj. Mohammed Yunis said. One of the four white sport utility vehicles in the convoy was damaged, but none of the foreigners in them was hurt.
In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit a US Army patrol in northern Baghdad, killing one soldier, said military spokesman Sgt. 1st Class David Abrams.
That attack raised to 1,945 the number of US military members who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Four other US soldiers were slightly wounded when a car bomb hit their patrol in central Baghdad, setting off fighting with small-arms fire and US helicopters, Abrams said.
At least 283 people have been killed by insurgents in Iraq in the past 11 days.
That includes Wednesday’s bombing of a Shiite mosque in Hillah, a city south of Baghdad, killing at least 25 and wounding 93, as hundreds of worshippers gathered for prayers at the start of the Islamic month of Ramadan and for the funeral of a man killed two days ago in a blast at his restaurant.
The insurgent attacks — often targeting Shiite Muslims — are aimed at wrecking the referendum. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has declared “all-out war” on Shiites, has called for stepped-up violence during Ramadan.
Elsewhere, insurgents bombed a pipeline near the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, sending plumes of black smoke and fire up into the air. The pipeline connects oil fields with Kirkuk’s refineries, said police Capt. Farhad Talabani. Iraq’s Northern Oil Co. would soon repair the damage, as it has after many other attacks, he said.
Thousands of US and Iraqi troops also were waging two major offensives in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland, in an attempt to put down Al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgents ahead of the vote.
At least 42 insurgents have been killed in the “Iron Fist” offensive, which began Saturday near the Syrian border, and six in the “River Gate” offensive, which started further east on Tuesday, the US military said. Scores of suspected insurgents have been detained, and at least four American servicemen have died in the two offensives, the military said.
