BAGHDAD, 2 January 2005 — With promised nationwide elections less than a month away, Iraqi insurgents made a bloody start to 2005 killing 13 people, including a US soldier and a Lebanese contractor.
Two of the dead were beheaded by their killers, and one of the attacks, the drive-by shooting of a provincial official, was claimed by an affiliate of Al-Qaeda.
In a New Year’s message broadcast on state television, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warned Iraqis that 2005 promised to be decisive for their country’s future.
Provincial council leader Nawfal Abdul Hussein was killed along with his brother Fares outside his home in the restive town of Baqubah, north of Baghdad, medics and witnesses said.
Police also discovered the body of another council member, veterinarian Ali Herdan, dumped on a roadside outside the town.
Militants loyal to Al-Qaeda’s Iraq commander Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi claimed Hussein’s killing in a statement posted on a website.
The group also posted what appeared to be video footage of the execution of five Iraqi National Guardsmen in the militant stronghold of Ramadi on Monday.
In the capital, police found two beheaded corpses in white bags dumped in the western Al-Khadra neighborhood.
Identity papers showed one of the men was employed by the US-led coalition, the Interior Ministry said.
In southeastern Baghdad, gunmen killed an Iraqi policeman outside his home, the ministry added.
And in the center, a Lebanese employee of a Kuwaiti contracting firm was killed and a colleague wounded inside the Green Zone, the heavily fortified city center compound which houses the Iraqi interim government and the US Embassy.
Mourners meanwhile buried an ambulance driver who was killed by a stray bullet in the Haifa Street neighborhood, an insurgent stronghold in central Baghdad, on Friday.
North of the capital, two National Guardsmen were killed and six wounded in a mortar strike on their base in Isaki, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the city of Samarra.
Near the oil refinery town of Baiji, one Iraqi civilian was killed and four wounded, including a woman and a child, when insurgents and National Guardsmen traded fire before dawn in the village of Al-Sainiya, police said. Near the northern oil center of Kirkuk, gunmen killed a police lieutenant outside his house in Taza, police said.
Further south, police recovered the corpses of two Iraqi truck drivers by the banks of the Tigris River in Balad. The pair worked for a trucking firm doing business with the US military, police said.
Just north of Baghdad, one US soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bombing yesterday, the US military said.
West of the capital, a US Marine was killed in action in Al-Anbar province late Friday, the military said without specifying where.
Just south of the capital, an explosion cut a feeder pipeline to a power station in the insurgent bastion of Mussayeb, police said.
It was not immediately clear if the apparent sabotage attack had halted generation at the plant, which supplies electricity to Baghdad.
In his speech to the nation Friday night, Iraq’s US-backed premier told his people they stood at a crossroads.
“The new year will be decisive in the history of our nation and its future,” said Allawi, who has staken his reputation on seeing through the promised Jan. 30 elections despite repeated sabotage threats from insurgent groups.
— With input from agencies
