BAGHDAD, 12 July 2006 — A new spate of bombings, shootings and gunbattles left more than 40 people dead across Iraq yesterday, including 10 Shiites massacred in an apparent sectarian attack in Baghdad. The persistent violence, which came despite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s calls for national unity, renewed fears of a full-fledged civil war and prompted MPs to demand an explanation from security ministers for the deteriorating situation.
In yesterday’s deadliest attack, 10 Shiites carrying a coffin in a minibus were ambushed and killed by gunmen on a highway near Baghdad’s volatile Sunni neighborhood of Dura, a Defense Ministry official said. They were heading to the Shiite holy city of Najaf to bury the corpse, the official said. The attack came less than two hours after the lifting of a curfew imposed on Dura on Monday.
The US military, meanwhile, condemned an Internet video posted by Al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch showing the mutilated bodies of two American soldiers it claims to have killed last month. Al-Qaeda said it killed the two soldiers — Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker — to avenge the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by soldiers of the same unit to which the two soldiers belonged.
In ousted President Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, the wife of the provincial governor was killed in a bomb explosion as she treated patients in her clinic, police said. Ameera Al-Rubaie, a gynecologist, was killed and four of her patients wounded in the attack which involved a time bomb left in her surgery, an officer said, asking not to be identified.
Earlier, at least six Iraqi soldiers were killed in a gunbattle in the province pitting government and US troops against suspected Al-Qaeda militants, the Iraqi Army said. Maj. Gen. Anwar Hama Amin said the soldiers died in a joint operation with US troops in the village of Al-Salman following the killing of three soldiers who made a visit there Monday.
The local Al-Qaeda commander, Jassem Salama, who was “wanted for the killing of at least 30 Iraqis and was feared for beheading his victims,” was also killed in the fighting, Amin said.
The trial of Saddam Hussein and seven former aides was adjourned for two weeks yesterday after the chief judge bluntly told defense lawyers to end their boycott. “Tell your colleagues who are out of the country that if they do not show up next time, they will hurt the case of their clients,” judge Rauf Abdel Rahman told those lawyers attending the short hearing. Saddam and several co-defendants boycotted the final phase of the trial for the second straight day yesterday, along with some of their lawyers.
