BAGHDAD, 27 September 2005 — Gunmen dressed as policemen shot dead five Shiite teachers and a driver in their school south of Baghdad yesterday, and a suicide bomber killed 10 people when he rammed a bus full of Oil Ministry employees. The attacks came as sectarian violence between Iraq’s main communities surges ahead of an Oct. 15 referendum on a controversial new constitution. Teachers have so far been largely spared from the violence.
“These men were terrorists in police uniform,” a spokesman for Babel police told Reuters after the teachers were killed in the town of Iskandariya. He said the gunmen arrived at the school in two civilian cars, led the teachers and the school driver to a part of the school where no children were present, and shot them.
Earlier, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a bus carrying Oil Ministry employees as it passed a police academy in Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 30, police and witnesses said. “We heard the blast. They died,” said a dazed survivor, who stood in a hospital as victims of the blast were wheeled in on stretchers.
He told Reuters Television the bus was carrying employees of a state oil exploration company. Oil is the main revenue earner for Iraq’s battered economy, and energy infrastructure and staff are frequently attacked by insurgents. It was not immediately clear whether the bomber was targeting police or the Oil Ministry. Police were not able to say how many of the dead and wounded were police and how many were from the ministry. Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Uloum told reporters he believed the bomber had aimed the attack at his staff. “Unfortunately these terrorist operations continue to target innocents,” he said.
The violence erupted as the US military released more than 500 prisoners from the notorious Abu Ghraib jail to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan beginning in early October.
“In the spirit of the holy month of Ramadan, the Iraqi government requested a special release board and worked with multinational forces to expedite the release of more than 1,000 security detainees from Abu Ghraib,” the military said.
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warned yesterday that the government of Ibrahim Jaafari was failing to heal postwar wounds among the ethnic and religious communities, leading to potential disaster.
“National consensus is being eroded grossly. The government should really reverse course and embark on national reconciliation and reinstitute institutions without militias ... this is the only way forward,” Allawi told Reuters in Amman. “We see an extensive program of dismantling state institutions ... These are ingredients for catastrophe.”
