BAGHDAD, 4 October 2005 — Iraq’s oil minister survived an apparent assassination attempt yesterday when a roadside bomb blasted his motorcade, the latest attack on the energy industry that is vital to rebuilding the country’s beleaguered economy.
As US forces hunted Al-Qaeda guerrillas on Iraq’s border with Syria, the American military denied a claim by militants to have killed two captured US Marines.
US troops also fought rebels closer to Baghdad, in the capital of the Anbar region that is home to many insurgents from Saddam Hussein’s once dominant Sunni Arab minority. At least five people were killed, said local doctors in the town, Ramadi.
The bomb attack on Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Al-Uloom’s motorcade lent weight to fears expressed by Iraqi and US officials of more violence ahead of an Oct. 15 constitutional referendum. Many Sunnis argue that the charter will seal their fall from power and hand oil riches to majority Shiites and ethnic Kurds.
Along with a new constitution, a trial of Saddam Hussein is also intended by the new, US-backed government to bury Iraq’s past. The Special Tribunal trying the former president confirmed the court will first convene on Oct. 19, but said it could be persuaded to adjourn. Saddam’s lawyers have demanded more time.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which claims many of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq, posted a statement on the Internet saying two US soldiers had been killed in the west after US forces failed to free women prisoners as demanded on Sunday by the group.
The posting had no pictures and a US military spokesman dismissed it as “disgusting propaganda.” “We have no reports of any deaths,” Lt. Col. Steven Boylan said.
US forces launched their latest attack on insurgents in western Iraq on Saturday, sending about 1,000 troops to root out fighters including foreign militants that US and Iraqi officials say have come in from Syria to join the struggle against the US-backed Baghdad government.
The military, in an update on the fighting late on Sunday, said troops engaged in numerous skirmishes around Si’ida and other towns close to the Syrian border, calling in air support to kill at least four insurgents.
In Si’ida, troops fired one tank round into a building, wounding five civilians, the military said, while in nearby Karabila at least eight insurgents were killed.
