BAGHDAD, 17 March 2005 — Iraq’s first freely elected Parliament in half a century began its historic opening session yesterday after a series of explosions targeted the gathering.
The Parliament’s 275 members, elected during Jan. 30 balloting, convened in an auditorium amid tight security in the heavily guarded Green Zone with US helicopter gunships hovering overhead.
Minutes before the assembly convened, at least half a dozen explosions detonated a few hundred meters away. The US military said two mortar rounds landed inside the zone but caused no injuries. After yesterday’s session ended, another mortar shell hit an empty building in central Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood, setting the two-story structure on fire, police and witnesses said. There were no reports of injuries.
The lawmakers opened with a reading of verses from the Qur’an. Iraqi Chief Justice Medhat Al-Mahmoud then administered the oath to the assembled deputies.
“It is a great day in Iraqi history that its elected representatives meet,” said Fuad Masoum, a Kurdish delegate. “This day coincides with a painful memory that has many meanings. ... Today, on this occasion, we celebrate the inauguration of Parliament after the fall of this regime.”
Eleven people were killed yesterday in car bombs and other attacks across Iraq.
In the rebel bastion of Baquba, a suicide car bomb blew up at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint, killing five soldiers and wounding 10 troops, plus two civilians, police said.
Earlier, hospital officials in Baquba said two people had died in the blast.
Meanwhile, a car bomb targeting a US military convoy blew up in the southern Baghdad district of Dura, killing one civilian and wounding a dozen others, security sources said.
Yesterday marked the anniversary of the Saddam Hussein-ordered chemical attack in 1988 on the northern Kurdish town of Halabja, an attack that killed 5,000 people.
Iraqi leaders have not yet agreed on a coalition government, and the leader of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, cleric Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, said his alliance hoped to “form a government whose motto is to serve the Iraqi people, a government of national unity and reconciliation.”
“A government that can root out violence and set a trial for Saddam and the elements of his regime,” Hakim said in a speech that wove in and out of prayer. He said a government led by the alliance would also try “to achieve the independence of Iraq and put an end to the role of multinational forces in Iraq.”
Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who will probably become Iraq’s next president, said deputies “all have a duty to achieve real national unity.”
“Iraq is facing tough times due to the continuation of criminal terror crimes,” he said. “Al-Qaeda is waging a war of extermination on Kurds and Shiites.”
The alliance and a Kurdish coalition agreed last week to form a coalition government with Shiite politician Ibrahim Al-Jaafari as prime minister. In return, Talabani will become Iraq’s first Kurdish president, though the presidency is a largely ceremonial post.
To prevent suicide car bomb attacks against Iraq’s new lawmakers, authorities stepped up security around the Green Zone. Two bridges leading to the zone were shut down Tuesday, and roadblocks were erected on other streets leading to the area.
— With input from agencies
