BAGHDAD, 4 September 2006 — Twenty one Iraqis have been killed — including two policemen and four children — in a series of attacks in Baquba northeast of Baghdad, security sources said yesterday.
Sources said that a car exploded in a market in New Baquba leaving its driver and four of his children dead. Three people were killed when unidentified militants opened fire on them in central Baquba, while a fourth was shot in Al-Miqdadiya district.
Two policemen were shot dead when insurgents opened fire on a police patrol in New Baquba. Another government official was assassinated on his way to work in Yarmouk district in western Baquba. And in Zaghnia northeast of Baquba a Shiite mosque was blown up overnight.
In Amara, gunmen killed a representative of Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, police said. Sheikh Hassan Mohammed Mahdi Al-Jawadi, 56, was gunned down in front of his office by gunmen in a car, said a police officer from Imara in Misan province.
He said gunmen had also killed Jawadi’s son, who was a policeman, two weeks ago in a similar attack. Jawadi’s killing comes a day after Sistani warned Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki of the dangers Iraq faced from militias if his fledgling government failed to curb the raging sectarian violence.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility yesterday for a series of attacks against Shiites in Baghdad on Thursday in which 50 people were killed.
In a statement posted on the Internet, Jamaat Jund Al-Sahaba (Soldiers of the Prophet’s Companions) said the attacks were in retaliation against what it said were killings of Sunni Muslims by Shiite militias.
“God has enabled your brethren in the Jamaat Jund Al-Sahaba to carry out a series of blessed operations against the strongholds of rejectionists (Shiites)...” said the statement posted on a website used by militant groups including Al-Qaeda. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified.
A series of explosions devastated homes in Baghdad just before nightfall on Thursday, killing 50 people and wounding five times as many, some of them in an apartment block that collapsed. The blasts came as families gathered for the start of the weekend. Violence continued in other cities, as a rocket attack targeted British troop headquarters in Basra, witnesses said. They said rockets fell on the British headquarters located in the presidential palaces compound in Al-Baradeiya district. No estimate of the damage was immediately available.
Also, an Iraqi freelance journalist working as a stringer for the news agency Agence France-Presse has been abducted in the country’s war-torn capital after visiting a relative in a government-run jail.
Bilal Abdelrahman Al-Obeidi disappeared on Aug. 14 after he visited a detention center near the Interior Ministry in central Baghdad to see his cousin. Obeidi’s family and AFP have been in contact with his captors using his mobile telephone, but the kidnappers have not identified themselves nor made any demands apart from asking for recharge codes for their own telephones.
The kidnapping has been reported to the Iraqi government and the US military, which coordinates security in Baghdad, but AFP only decided to publicize it after failing to persuade Obeidi’s captors to release him.
Meanwhile, the inauguration of a new Iraqi joint military command has been postponed because of a disagreement about how to define its relationship with US forces, a US military spokesman said yesterday.
The headquarters was due to have been declared open on Saturday at the Defense Ministry in Baghdad in the presence of senior Iraqi and coalition officers, but the ceremony was canceled at the last moment. “The ceremony was postponed in order to clarify language in the memorandum that delineates coalition support and responsibilities to the new Iraqi Joint headquarters,” US spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said.
“The major points and substance of the agreement are not in question. However, there is specific wording that needs to be refined,” he added. “The decision was made to postpone the ceremony rather than conduct it without the document being fully ready for signature by all those concerned.
“Postponing the ceremony has no impact on ongoing operations and we expect the document to be signed within a few days,” Johnson said. Once it is up and running, the new Iraqi headquarters will gradually assume operational command of Iraq’s 115,000-strong army, which is currently overseen by US headquarters.
