SAMARRA, Iraq, 29 December 2004 — At least 42 people were killed in a string of attacks on Iraqi security forces and other targets yesterday after Osama Bin Laden declared fugitive Jordanian Islamist Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi his “emir” in the country.
In an audiotape purportedly recorded by the Al-Qaeda leader, Bin Laden also said all those who took part in landmark Jan. 30 elections would be “infidels,” raising the stakes in the run-up to the vote.
In one of a series of apparently coordinated strikes in Sunni Muslim strongholds north of Baghdad, insurgents stormed a police station in Dijla between Tikrit and Samarra and gunned down 12 policemen, police said.
“Armed men took control of the police station and executed 12 policemen, three of them officers,” one police source said, adding that the attackers then dynamited the building.
Just outside Tikrit, the hometown of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, three policemen were killed in an attack on a checkpoint.
Another four policeman and a National Guardsman were shot dead at a police station in Ishaki, south of the restive town of Samarra.
Three guardsmen and three civilians were killed in a car bomb attack targeting a USIraq military convoy in Samarra, hospital sources said.
The US military confirmed a car bombing near a tank but said it had no record of the deaths and that there were no US casualties.
In Baquba, 50 kilometers northeast of the capital, six National Guardsmen were killed in a suicide car bomb attack.
At Al-Shurqat, 180 kilometers north of Samarra, two policeman were killed in an attack on their post, an officer said. In the same area, an Iraqi interpreter for the US Army was killed and an Iraqi businessman traveling with him was kidnapped, another officer said.
A roadside bomb killed one Iraqi civilian and wounded another on a road frequented by US convoys near Baiji, 200 kilometers north of Baghdad, a hospital official said. Three Iraqi businessmen working with the US Army were killed at Suleyman Beg, 155 kilometers north of Baghdad and a curfew imposed on the city afterwards, an officer said.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber was killed and six people wounded in an attack against the convoy of an Iraqi National Guard’s Gen. Modher Abud as he was leaving his home, the Interior Ministry said.
Another policeman was killed in Balad when insurgents opened fire on security forces guarding a voter registration center.
The latest bloodshed brought to at least 74 the number of people killed in attacks throughout the country since Sunday evening, including two US soldiers.
Iraq’s nascent security forces have been crippled by a relentless and vicious campaign by insurgents, casting doubt on whether they would be able to handle securing next month’s crucial elections without massive help from US-led troops.
Highlighting the perils in Iraq ahead of the first post-Saddam vote, a voice recording attributed to Bin Laden and aired on Al-Jazeera television Monday warned all those who participate in the vote would be “infidels.”
The voice also anointed Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted man who is blamed for some of the worst bombings, assassinations and beheadings, as Bin Laden’s representative in Iraq.
“The brother mujahed (holy warrior) Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is the emir of the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of Two Rivers,” said the message, whose authenticity could not be confirmed. “Brothers in the group must listen to him and obey him for what is good.”
Zarqawi, who has a $25 million price on his head, has previously professed his animosity and hatred towards Iraq’s majority Shiite community calling it “the fifth column of Islam.”
In the latest attack against Shiites and their leaders, a car bomb exploded Monday outside the headquarters of Abdel Aziz Al- Hakim, the chief of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq party. He escaped unscathed but 13 people were killed and scores wounded.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack but SCIRI spokesman Haitham Al- Husseini blamed Saddam’s old Baath Party for the attack.
Hakim is the top candidate in the Shiite coalition grouping called the Unified Iraqi Alliance, which is the early election favorite due to its endorsement from Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq.
