BAGHDAD, 26 June 2004 — At least 30 people were killed as the US forces launched their third airstrike in a week yesterday in Fallujah, using precision weapons to destroy a suspected safehouse for Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s terror network.
The Jordanian-born Al-Qaeda terrorist claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks in other Iraqi cities that killed more than 100 people Thursday — less than a week before Iraq’s new government takes power. Car bombs were set off and police stations were seized in an offensive aimed at creating chaos before the June 30 handover.
“Wherever and whenever we find elements of the Zarqawi network, we will attack them,” a military statement said of the strike.
US officials estimated nearly 30 people were killed in the attack, without indicating how they determined the figure. Al-Jazeera television, in a report from Fallujah, said four US missiles struck a vacant house in the eastern part of the city, injuring four residents of a nearby house.
In Baghdad, the country’s new leadership, due to assume sovereignty in five days, promised stern action against the troublemakers, claiming much of the unrest was directed by foreigners but offering no proof.
“Our culture, our customs have been destroyed,” interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said. “The time has come for a showdown.”
Earlier yesterday, US tanks and armored vehicles maneuvered on a highway near the edges of Fallujah, firing down both sides of the road — a tactic that has been seen in the past — while armed men in an eastern suburb fired at the Americans, according to Fallujah residents. Seven people died in two days of fighting there, hospital officials said.
A roadside bomb exploded in a residential neighborhood in Baghdad, killing one Iraqi policeman and wounding another, police said. In Thursday’s coordinated attacks, Al-Qaeda suspects set off car bombs and seized police stations in an offensive aimed at creating chaos just days before the handover of power to a new Iraqi government.
US and Iraqi forces regained control in heavy fighting, but the day’s violence killed more than 100 people, most of them Iraqi civilians.
Three US soldiers were among the dead. At least 320 people were wounded, including 12 Americans. “We expect there will be more attacks,” Interior Minister Falah Al-Naqib told reporters yesterday.
As the situation worsened, Iraq’s interim vice president warned that a drastic deterioration in the country’s security could result in the implementation of emergency measures or martial law — however undesirable that may be in a democratic society.
“Announcing emergency laws or martial law depends on the nature of the situation. In normal situations, there is clearly no need for that (step),” Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, a Shiite and member of the Islamic Dawa Party, said in an interview.
“But in cases of excess challenges, emergency laws have their place,” he said, adding that any such laws would fall within a “democratic framework that respects the rights of Iraqis.”
In an interview that appeared yesterday in the German newspaper Die Welt, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said such a declaration “would make our task in Iraq more complex, because applying martial law is more a police problem than a military one — at least one would hope so.”
Mosul residents said the northern city was tense yesterday, with a marked increase in the number of police on the streets. Fewer people ventured out to markets for fear of more attacks.
Elsewhere, three mortar shells exploded early yesterday near an oil pipeline damaged last week by sabotage, police Capt. Mushtaq Talib said. The latest explosion caused no damage, Talib said.
Iraq’s new leaders recently suggested the possibility of at least partial martial law in some hotspots around the country as a way of stemming the violence.
— Additional input from agencies
