BAGHDAD, 3 June 2005 — At least 31 people were killed in a wave of violence that swept over northern Iraq yesterday, as Baghdad vowed that all groups in the fragmented country would take part in the political process.
The deadliest blast, in the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu, ripped through a restaurant as bodyguards of Deputy Prime Minister Roj Shaways, a Kurd, were having breakfast.
“Seven cars were destroyed and 12 charred bodies were pulled from the wreckage,” said a Defense Ministry statement. A local medic said he had treated 38 people for their wounds.
The guards were in the town, 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of the main oil hub of Kirkuk, on their way to meet up with Shaways. “I was having my breakfast at the Baghdad Restaurant when a powerful explosion rocked the place,” said taxi driver Nozad Abdullah, who survived the blast because he was in the bathroom when the attack happened.
“I went outside to see what happened and I saw two of my taxi passengers wounded inside the car and three shattered bodies lying on the ground.” The town, home to 150,000 Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen, is a popular stop on the main road between Kirkuk and Baghdad.
An hour later, a second suicide car bombing targeted a US diplomatic convoy entering the complex of the Northern Oil Company in Kirkuk itself, killing a four-year-old child and wounding 11 civilians, police said.
Four more people were killed, including a local politician, and five others wounded in a suicide car bomb attack in Baquba, about 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of Baghdad, an Iraqi security source said.
To the northwest, five people were killed in an attack targeting the country’s fledgling security forces in Mosul. “Five people, including a policeman, were killed and 13 wounded in a double motorcycle bombing around 4:15 p.m. (1215 GMT) in front of a cafe near a police station in the city,” said Cmdr. Mootaz Abdel Wahed Mohammed.
Two firefights between US and Iraqi forces and insurgents later killed two Iraqi troops and a gunman, and a Turkish truck driver.
In nearby Siniyah, an Iraqi soldier died and another was injured during a mortar attack on their base, another officer added, while further north in the Chorgat region, four civilians were killed by a roadside bomb.
“A family was driving from Mosul to Chorgat when their vehicle was hit by the explosion,” army Capt. Assad Sadad said.
But in Baghdad, police said they had thwarted a suicide attack, with the bomber forced to detonate his charge before reaching his target, wounding one policeman.
The capital is currently the scene of Operation Lightning, a large-scale offensive aimed at barring rebel access to the capital and rooting out insurgents hiding there.
Yesterday’s attacks heralded an inauspicious beginning to June, following on the heels of the bloody month of May when an estimated 672 Iraqis were killed.
They came as Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari voiced optimism that disenfranchised groups believed to be leading the insurgency could be brought into in the political process.
“All Iraqi communities would participate in that process. There would be no one marginalized at all,” he said following talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington.
Iraq’s Sunni minority, which held power under deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, has been largely disempowered since they mostly boycotted January’s elections, for fear of reprisals or in protest at the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.
“I am very comfortable with the commitment of the Iraqi government to a process that is inclusive,” Rice told reporters. Several parties from across the sectarian spectrum joined together at a meeting yesterday in Baghdad to condemn the US detention on Monday of the Islamic Party’s Sunni leader Mohsen Abdel Hamid.
The arrest was “unacceptable” and “American forces should respect human rights and halt abusive detentions and arrests”, they said in a statement.
US forces on Monday released Abdel Hamid after admitting they had detained him “by mistake” in a morning raid on his home, during which he was hooded and dragged off along with his three sons.
In the southern city of Nassiriyah, a local government source said yesterday police had arrested the brother of a former regional Baath party chief along with three other suspects.
“Police arrested Anwar Abdel Karim Al-Saadun in Al-Dabitiyah, south of Nassiriyah,” he said. His brother, Abdel Baqi Abdel Karim, is on the US list of 55 most-wanted former regime figures and is still on the run.
Police have also arrested two former Baath party members accused of killing 43 Shiites during the 1991 revolt against Saddam, the police chief in the southern city of Kerbala said.
The US military announced that two American soldiers had been killed in action near Ramadi, in western Iraq, on Wednesday, without providing further details. Another US soldier died in Kirkuk of “a non-battle-related injuries” on Wednesday, the US military said. The latest deaths bring the number of US service personnel to have died in Iraq to 1,660, based on Pentagon figures.
