BAQUBA, Iraq, 30 October 2005 — At least 25 people died late yesterday and 45 were wounded when a suicide car bomb ripped through a village market near Baquba, north of Baghdad, police and medical sources said. The attack in the Shiite village of Huwaider came minutes before the start of evening prayers at a nearby mosque and the breaking of the daylong Ramadan fast.
An AFP photographer at Baquba general hospital described scenes of chaos and anguish as families sought news of loved ones and ambulances kept bringing in bodies, some blown to bits. Many of the wounded lay on the floor because there were not enough beds. In Baghdad, five political coalitions established largely on sectarian or ethnic lines were set to dominate the campaign for Iraq’s Dec. 15 general elections, the final phase in the country’s yearlong transition to democracy. The coalitions, an undetermined number of parties, and some independent candidates all met the Friday deadline of filing for the election.
A 275-member Parliament is to serve for four years, its first full term since Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled in April 2003. As politicians gave press briefings on the campaign, the US military said that three US soldiers had been killed yesterday in two incidents in Iraq. US forces bombed three buildings in the western Iraqi town of Husaybah yesterday, killing an estimated 10 suspected rebels.
Meanwhile, according to officials in the United Arab Emirates, Saddam Hussein accepted an 11th hour offer to flee into exile weeks ahead of the US-led 2003 invasion, but Arab League officials scuttled the proposal. The exile initiative was spearheaded by the late president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahayan, at an emergency Arab summit held in Egypt in February 2003, a top government official said in Dubai yesterday on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Saddam allegedly accepted the offer to try to halt the invasion and bring elections to Iraq within six months, claimed the official and Sheikh Zayed’s son, who spoke in a separate interview aired by Al-Arabiya TV during a documentary. “We had the final acceptance of the various parties ... the main players in the world and the concerned person, Saddam Hussein,” the son, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, said during the program aired Thursday to mark the first anniversary of his father’s death.
“We were coming (to the summit in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh resort) to place the facts on the table,” said Sheik Mohammed, who is deputy chief of the Emirates armed forces and crown prince of Abu Dhabi. “The results would have emerged if the initiative was presented and discussed. This is now history.” The anonymous Emirates official said Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa didn’t bring the proposal to the summit’s discussion table because Arab foreign ministers hadn’t presented and accepted it as league protocol dictated.
