SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, 26 October 2005 — Two suicide bomb attacks killed at least 13 people in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya yesterday, police and hospital officials said. One suicide bomber in a car blew himself up near a building housing regional officials who deal with Kurdish militia forces, known as the Peshmerga, killing 12 people, police said.
Earlier, two other suicide bombers in cars targeted Kurdish official Mulla Bakhtiar as he left his house. He escaped the assassination attempt but one of his guards was killed, police said.
Sulaimaniya, in the northern mountains, has been among the most tranquil spots in Iraq, rarely troubled by the violence that has racked the country in the past two years, and has been the focus of considerable business investment.
The blast came on a day when Iraq’s Electoral Commission released final results of an Oct. 15 referendum showing 79 percent approval for the constitution, which enshrines Kurdistan’s broad autonomy. Sunni Arab insurgents fighting the Shiite- and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad opposed the charter.
Kurds have also been attacked by Sunni Arab supporters of ousted President Saddam Hussein, who went on trial in Baghdad last week. Among the accusations he faces are genocide against Kurds and the gassing of Kurdish civilians in 1988 at Halabja, 80 km from Sulaimaniya.
Nine border guards were found shot dead in southeastern Iraq near the border with Saudi Arabia, hospital sources said. The bodies were discovered in the Nakhib region, some 260 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, hospital officials from the Hussein Hospital in the Shiite holy city of Kerbala said. The victims had been shot dead, added the officials who had examined the remains. The bodies were still being identified but they were “probably Shiite” Arabs, they said.
Meanwhile, a group of former foreign leaders backing the defense of Saddam yesterday called for a UN probe into the murder of an attorney working for one of his fellow accused.
Defense lawyers have also appealed for UN protection following the kidnapping and murder of Saadoun Janabi just a day after the dramatic opening of the trial of Saddam and seven former cohorts last week.
An investigation into the attack was an “urgent necessity,” the former foreign leaders and ministers wrote in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The letter emerged as Saddam’s Iraqi lawyer Khalil Al-Dulaimi arrived in Amman to take part in talks on coordinating defense strategy for his next court hearing on Nov. 28.
Investigations by Iraqi and US officials into the murder “will have no credibility,” said the letter signed by former Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella, former Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad, French former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas and former US attorney general Ramsey Clark.
