BAGHDAD, 15 May 2005 — Gunmen assassinated a top Iraqi Foreign Ministry official yesterday in a drive-by shooting in the capital as the US military pronounced its weeklong offensive near the Syrian border over.
Jassim Mohammed Ghani, the ministry’s director-general, was killed at about 9 p.m. in western Baghdad’s Al-Kharijiyah district, Capt. Talib Thamer said. Three bystanders were also wounded in the attack.
Announcing the end of the weeklong Operation Matador, the military said it had successfully “neutralized” an insurgent sanctuary, killed more than 125 militants, wounded many more and detained 39 of “intelligence value.”
Nine US Marines were killed and 40 injured during the campaign, the military said in a statement.
The remote desert region, an ancient smuggling route and insurgent hideout, had been used as a staging area where fighters who slipped over the border from Syria received weapons and equipment for deadly attacks in Iraq’s major cities, according to the military.
“During the seven day operation, Marines disrupted the known infiltration routes through the region and disrupted sanctuaries and staging areas,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, insurgents killed at least 14 people in urban bombings yesterday.
A suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into a police convoy in central Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 10. Five Iraqis were also killed when a suicide bomber drove a motorbike at a joint US-Iraqi convoy on the road between Tuz Kharmatu and Sulayman Beg, south of the northern oil center of Kirkuk.
Three street cleaners were killed and four others wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad’s southern district of Dura, hospital officials said. In the main northern city of Mosul, two civilians died and a policeman was hurt in a suicide bombing targeting a joint Iraqi-US patrol.
In another development, Iraqi authorities issued arrest warrants against two former Cabinet ministers as the country’s new government cracks down on widespread corruption.
Former Transport Minister Louei Hatim Sultan Al-Aris and ex-Labor Minister Leila Abdul-Latif have been accused of separate corruption charges, said Jawad Al-Maliki, a senior member of new Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari’s Dawa Party. Aris is accused of administrative corruption, while Abdul-Latif is wanted for “financial corruption and brining back to the government members of the former regime,” Maliki said.
— Additional input from agencies
