BAGHDAD, 6 May 2005 — A day after killing scores of people queuing up for police jobs in the northern oil town of Arbil, insurgents yesterday targeted security forces in the capital. At least 24 people were killed in ambushes and bomb blasts.
In the deadliest attack, a suicide bomber strapped with explosives blew himself up at an army recruitment center at a former airfield in western Baghdad, killing at least 13 people and wounding 15. Suicide bombers have repeatedly targeted crowds of Iraqis queuing up to join the security forces.
Gunmen also ambushed a police convoy, shooting dead 10 policemen and then setting their vehicles ablaze, police said.
And a car bomb was detonated as the deputy interior minister’s convoy drove past, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding six people, police said. The official was unhurt.
The attacks are part of an escalation of violence aimed at destabilizing Iraq’s new democratic government, which held its first Cabinet meeting yesterday. The insurgents often target Iraqi security forces, which are being recruited and trained by the US-led coalition as part of its eventual exit strategy.
The government announced the arrest of a former official of Saddam Hussein’s now-defunct Baath party in Mosul on suspicion of masterminding a string of insurgent attacks.
Illustrating the uphill task in training new Iraqi security forces, US officers said they had pulled another battalion of Iraqi commandos from the rebel bastion of Samarra 125 km north of Baghdad last month after repeated incidents of misconduct.
In a March incident that sealed the unit’s fate, the commandos set a home near Samarra on fire after searching it and finding no incriminating evidence.
Many of the controversial 12,000-strong unit are from Saddam’s former special forces, security directorate and Republican Guard.
The US military said US and Iraqi forces were holding without charge nine Iraqi journalists working for international news organizations, on suspicion of aiding insurgents. The local journalists working for seven Western news organizations are currently detained with “some having been held for several months”, said Col. Steve Boylan, a spokesman for US forces in Iraq.
The US military is believed to be holding two AFP journalists, though US officers could only confirm the detention of one, recently transferred to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
Reporter Ammar Daham Naef Khalaf was detained April 11 by US soldiers who, according to his family, searched his home in Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad. He was due to be transferred on April 26 to Abu Ghraib, where he can be held for up to 60 days incommunicado.
AFP photographer Fares Nawaf Al-Issaywi was detained May 1 by Iraqi police while taking pictures in Fallujah before being handed over to US soldiers, his family said. US forces have so far been unable to confirm they are holding him.
The latest violence has left the government grappling with how to deal with an insurgency seemingly bent on escalating attacks.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari had hoped to draw support away from the insurgency by including in his Cabinet members of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which dominated under Saddam. But members of his Shiite-dominated alliance have blocked candidates with links to Saddam’s regime.
Jaafari’s’ 37-member Cabinet, most of whom were sworn in Tuesday, includes just four Sunni ministers in relatively minor posts. Months after the Jan. 30 parliamentary elections, bickering continued over two deputy prime minister slots and five portfolios that are in temporary hands, including defense.
Yesterday, lawmakers from Jaafari’s United Iraqi Alliance said there was agreement on who would fill the key oil and electricity slots, which are destined for Shiites. Ibrahim Bahr Al-Uloum, the first oil minister in the former US-appointed Governing Council, will return to the position, said Ali Al-Dabagh, a lawmaker involved in the negotiations.
Former Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi has been filling in as oil minister.
Mihsin Shlash, an independent Shiite lawmaker, will be electricity minister, Al-Dabagh and two other lawmakers said.
Meanwhile, Bulgaria’s Parliament voted to pull its troops from Iraq by the end of the year, in the latest blow to the coalition of US allies. But opposition leaders, who are against Bulgaria’s presence in Iraq, denounced the vote as a ploy by the government to win support ahead of summer elections.
Bulgaria’s decision follows recent moves from Poland, Ukraine, and other members of the US-led “Coalition of the Willing” to quit a war that is deeply unpopular among Europeans.
— Additional input from agencies
