BAGHDAD, 23 July 2005 — At least 13 Iraqis were killed, nine of them policemen, in drive-by shootings in and around Baghdad yesterday, police and ministry officials said. Three policemen were killed and another seriously wounded in two drive-by shootings yesterday morning.
Gunmen drove up alongside a police patrol car in the Al-Baladayat district of west Baghdad and sprayed it with bullets, killing two policemen and wounding another. Half an hour later, gunmen in a car shot dead another policeman in a police vehicle in the same district of the capital. Two civilians were also killed, police said.
Two police commandos dressed in civilian clothes were shot dead from a car in another district of west Baghdad. Two more policemen were shot dead at an east Baghdad crossroads as they directed traffic.
Later in the evening in west Baghdad, two more policemen were killed and three wounded when their patrol car was sprayed with bullets from a passing vehicle, an Interior Ministry official said.
The bodies of two policemen brothers were found shot through the head and chest on wasteland in east Baghdad after being taken by gunmen from their home Thursday, the Defense Ministry said.
A third brother, a Sunni Arab imam who was seized with them, was also found dead. In the so-called Triangle of Death just south of the capital, two civilians died and three were wounded when a bomb exploded on a highway near the town of Latifiyah.
Meanwhile, the people of Dujail, a small Shiite village north of Baghdad where a mass killing of local inhabitants took place 23 years ago under the regime of Saddam Hussein, say they want the ousted dictator hanged. Iraqi investigative Judge Raed Juhi said on July 17 that the investigation into the case relating to the 1982 massacre of 143 Dujail residents was complete and that “the date for the trial will be announced in the coming days”.
“We want justice at last,” said Aziz Jawad, three of whose relatives died in the massacre ordered after Saddam escaped an assassination bid in the village, 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the capital. “We want a public trial and if those indicted are sentenced to death, as we hope they will be, we want them to be hanged publicly,” said Jawad who spent five years in prison following the crackdown ordered by the ousted dictator.
In addition to Saddam, several others will stand trial in connection with the killings, including Saddam’s half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim Al-Hassan, who was in charge of the secret police, former vice president Taha Yasin Ramadan and former top judge Awad Badar Al-Bander.
