BAGHDAD, 5 December 2004 — Suicide car bombs struck Iraqi police and Kurdish militiamen in Baghdad and northern Iraq yesterday, killing at least 14 people, wounding 67, and again demonstrating the lethal reach of Iraq’s burgeoning insurgency just weeks ahead of crucial elections set for Jan. 30.
The US commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, acknowledged that the country’s homegrown forces aren’t yet up to the task of protecting the elections, making a planned US troop increase necessary. More than 40 Iraqis have been killed in the last two days alone.
Meanwhile, the insurgents’ deadly campaign against American troops continued. Two US soldiers were killed by roadside bombs in Baghdad and north of the capital yesterday, and the military announced two other Americans died in a suicide car bombing of their post near the Jordanian border the day before.
With the country still so unstable and elections eight weeks away, the US military now plans to increase its troop strength from 138,000 to about 150,000 by mid-January — slightly more than during the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime — in an attempt to keep order during the vote. Their primary concern are Iraq’s Sunnis, who generally oppose the vote and are believed to be fueling the insurgency.
In candid remarks, Abizaid admitted the troop increase wasn’t exactly what Washington had envisioned.
“It had been our hope that we would be able to have a combination of increases that mainly were Iraqi troops’ increases,” Abizaid, head of US Central Command, said. “And while the Iraqi troops are larger in number than they used to be, those forces have to be seasoned more, trained more. So, it’s necessary to bring more American forces.”
Speaking to reporters at a regional security conference in Bahrain, Abizaid declined to speculate on when the Iraqi forces would be ready or say how many they now number. But he said they were, “constantly improving.”
Officials had hoped that the recent US-led invasion of the insurgent hotbed of Fallujah would put Iraq’s rebels on the defensive. But the latest attacks sent a clear message that they are still highly capable of hitting back where they choose.
Yesterday’s car bombs in Baghdad went off nearly simultaneously at about 9:30 a.m. by a police station across the street from a checkpoint leading to the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the offices of Iraq’s interim government and several foreign missions.
Bursts of automatic fire followed the thunderous detonation, which shook windows several hundred yards away in buildings on the opposite side of the Tigris River.
Health officials said the bodies of seven people killed by the blast and 59 wounded were brought to two Baghdad hospitals. Officials said most of the victims were police officers, but the identities of all the dead were not yet known.
Adel Hassan, a policeman who survived the attack with head injuries, said at a hospital crammed with victims that a “suicide car bomber sped into our place (the police station) ... and then there was an explosion.”
The attack came a day after a highly coordinated assault on a police station west of Baghdad in which insurgents killed 16 police, looted the station’s armory and freed dozens of prisoners.
“We are moving toward the elections while the insurgents, terrorists and the former Baath regime members will try to destroy the security and they will try to build an environment that the people feel that there is no security,” an Iraqi official said.
— Additional input from agencies
