BAGHDAD, 3 November 2006 — At least 119 Iraqi policemen were killed in shootings, abductions and bomb attacks last month, the Interior Ministry said yesterday, underscoring the toll Iraq’s relentless violence is inflicting on the poorly trained and underequipped force.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on a trip to France that it would take his country two or three years to set up its own security forces and send US-led troops home.
The US military said, meanwhile, that it had killed a mid-ranking member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and his driver in an airstrike in Ramadi. And Iraqi police said gunmen killed the Shiite dean of Baghdad University’s school of administration and economics along with his wife and son on yesterday, four days after the murder of a prominent Sunni academic.
“Two to three years are needed to build our security forces and say goodbye to our friends,” Talabani said at a conference in Paris during a six-day visit that was to include talks with President Jacques Chirac yesterday.
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the media, said 185 police were reported injured in October — pointing to an extremely low survival rate among members of the force, who lack the armored vehicles, body armor, and fortified bases of the US troops in the country. In contrast, there is a much higher proportion of injured to slain American soldiers, with 33,838 wounded and 2,817 killed since the war began.
The Iraqi police death toll for October follows an announcement by the top US commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, that more than 300 Iraqi police and soldiers died during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began at the end of September and ended early last week.
Altogether, more than 1,000 Iraqis died from violence in October, the highest level since The Associated Press began tracking civilian deaths in April 2005. That count most likely underestimates the true figure because many deaths go unreported. The United Nations puts the monthly death toll at more than 3,000.
Scattered bombings and shootings in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq yesterday killed at least eight people and injured 42, police said. The bodies of two men who had been bound and blindfolded before being shot execution style were found dumped in an eastern suburb of the capital.
In a brief statement, the US military said Rafa Al-Ithawi, also known as Abu Taha, was killed in the city 70 miles west of Baghdad on Wednesday by laser-guided weapons that destroyed his vehicle.
The US military said Al-Ithawi had been named an Al-Qaeda in Iraq emir, giving him the rank of local level commander in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni insurgency that has stubbornly battled US troops and their Iraqi allies.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq has sworn affiliation to Osama Bin Laden and is blamed for engineering many of the most brutal incidents of sectarian violence in Iraq.
The military said Al-Ithawi frequently provided haven for foreign militants who come to Iraq to carry out attacks on civilians and US coalition forces.
“This and other recent operations in the region highlight the deliberate, methodical dismantlement of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq network and those who contribute to its illegal actions,” the statement said.
The Iraqi government issued a nearly identical statement about the attack, but gave no additional details.
The US military killed Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s founder, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, in a similar airstrike in May. Iraqi police said economics dean Jassim Al-Asadi was driving with his family in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah when unidentified assailants pulled alongside and opened fire, police Lt. Ahmed Ibrahim said.
The shooting follows the killing on Monday of geologist Essam Al-Rawi, head of the University Professor’s Union and a senior member of the hard-line Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have links to the anti-Shiite insurgency raging against US forces and their Iraqi allies.
The murders closely followed the pattern of tit-for-tat sectarian killings that have raged through much of Iraq following attacks on Shiite holy sites in February.
Academics have also increasingly been singled out for attacks due to their relatively high public stature and vulnerability. Some professors have also been killed by students angered over poor grades or other grievances, or because of their past membership in the Baath Party of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
The Education Ministry says at least 154 university professors were murdered in Iraq between April 9, 2003, shortly after the US invasion, and Oct. 3, 2006. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of others have fled to neighboring countries.
