BAGHDAD, 26 January 2005 — A spate of slayings and fierce clashes between insurgents and Iraqi police left at least nine Iraqis dead in Baghdad yesterday, including a senior judge, highlighting the grave security risks in the run-up to this weekend’s elections.
Also yesterday, a video emerged showing an American abducted last November by gunmen in Baghdad pleading for his life and appealing to Arab rulers to intercede to spare his life. Amid the violence, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said the time was not right to talk of a US troop withdrawal and that Iraq must first build up its security forces to confront the insurgents.
“Others spoke about the immediate withdrawal or setting a timetable for the withdrawal of multinational forces,” Allawi told reporters yesterday. “I will not deal with the security matter under political pretexts and exaggerations that do not serve Iraq and its people.”
“I will not set final dates” for the withdrawal of international forces “because setting final dates will be futile and dangerous,” Allawi said. In the video, hostage Roy Hallums spoke slowly, rubbing his hands as he sat with a rifle pointed at his head. He said he had been arrested by a “resistance group” because “I have worked with American forces.”
Hallums, 56, was seized Nov. 1 along with Filipino Robert Tarongoy during an armed assault on their compound in Baghdad’s Mansour district. The two were working for a Saudi company that does catering for the Iraqi Army. Both are missing. The video showed nothing of the Filipino.
“I am please asking for help because my life is in danger because it’s been proved I worked for American forces,” Hallums said. “I’m not asking for any help from President Bush because I know of his selfishness and unconcern for those who’ve been pushed into this hellhole.”
Fighting erupted yesterday in Baghdad’s eastern Rashad neighborhood as Iraqi police fired on insurgents who were handing out leaflets warning people not to vote in Sunday’s national elections. About the same time and in the same neighborhood, insurgents opened fire on police who were checking out a report of a possible car bomb.
Another bomb blew off the gate of a secondary school in the neighborhood and gunmen opened fire on Iraqi and US forces responding to the blast.
Altogether, three policemen were killed and nine were wounded in the various clashes, according to an official at Kindi Hospital. Two insurgents died and a shopkeeper was also killed in the cross-fire.
Earlier, officials reported 11 policemen were killed and offered no explanation for the revised death toll.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed two Iraqi Army soldiers on patrol west of Baghdad, witnesses said. Officials have warned of a surge in violence around Sunday’s national elections, which insurgents have vowed to disrupt.
The slain judge was identified as Qais Hashim Shameri, secretary-general of the judges council in the Justice Ministry. Assailants sprayed his car with bullets in an attack that also killed the judge’s driver and wounded his bodyguard.
