BAGHDAD, 18 May 2004 — In a major new blow to US-led occupiers, the head of Iraq’s Governing Council was killed in a car bombing yesterday.
Two bombers in a car detonated explosives, killing Izzedin Salim and six other people as a council convoy was heading into the heavily guarded “Green Zone” headquarters of the US-led authorities in central Baghdad for a meeting just six weeks before the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis.
The blast, which left a one-meter crater in the road, tore through several cars and a crowd of pedestrians lining up at a checkpoint to get into the compound.
An Iraqi resistance group, Al-Rashid Brigades, claimed two of its members carried out the attack and named them as Ali Khaled Al-Jabouri and Mohammed Hassan Al-Samarrai.
Despite the claim posted on an Islamist website, the US military said the bombing bore the hallmark of Al-Qaeda activist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
The bomb contained an artillery shell, just like one a suicide bomber used against another Green Zone checkpoint on May 6 and for which a group led by Zarqawi claimed responsibility, US officials said.
They also said a small amount of the nerve agent sarin was found in an artillery shell that exploded in Iraq a few days ago.
Salim, who was the current holder of the rotating Governing Council presidency, was the second of the 25-member Council to be killed. In September gunmen assassinated Aqila Al-Hashemi, one of three women on the council.
Salim employed relatives as bodyguards and snubbed coalition protection, the US-led authority said. Salim was a stalwart in the Shiite Al-Dawa political party.
The Arab League expressed its “strong condemnation” of the assassination. “We express our regret and strong condemnation,” said League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, whose 22-member bloc has been critical of the year-old US-led occupation of Iraq.
“Iraqi blood must not be shed in this fashion, whatever the political pretexts of this or that politician,” he said.
Britain, a staunch US ally, said the bomb would not force the coalition out of Iraq. “We are not going to have any so-called quick exit, there will be no cutting and running,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said during a visit to Turkey.
But clearly worried by the worsening security situation, the United States said it would move 3,600 army soldiers to Iraq this summer from South Korea for a one-year deployment.
A US official in Seoul said the deployment to Iraq, scheduled for “late summer,” would leave the United States with roughly 33,500 to 34,000 troops in South Korea.
South Korean officials said they agreed with the plan and would be discussing the timing and composition of the pullout.
Elsewhere, violence continued and US forces claimed they killed 50 militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr in heavy clashes in Karbala and Nasiriyah further south.
“Sounds of fighting in the downtown area could be heard for much of the night” in Karbala, said US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, adding that coalition forces estimated they had killed 30 fighters there. “Coalition forces estimate 17 Sadr militiamen killed in the vicinity of the shrine area, 13 killed in other areas,” he said.
In Nasiriyah, Kimmitt said, coalition forces killed 20 Sadr loyalists in airstrikes in the Italian-patrolled city yesterday. “Coalition fixed-wing aircraft engaged five targets this morning. The targets were five vehicles that had been observed unloading and loading ordnance,” Kimmitt told a news conference here.
Fighters from Sadr’s militia say US-led forces in Iraq routinely exaggerate casualties.
Meanwhile, two Russians abducted by Iraqis earlier this month were freed in the southern outskirts of Baghdad. The men identified themselves as Andrei Meshcheryakov and Alexander Gordiyenko. They were kidnapped May 10 in an ambush in which one of their colleagues was killed.
Dozens of hostages have been seized by fighters in Iraq since the start of April. Most have been released, but an Italian hostage was killed last month and earlier this month American entrepreneur Nicholas Berg was beheaded by his captors, who posted video of the decapitation on the Internet.
— Additional input from agencies
