BAGHDAD, 1 May 2007 — Dozens more people were killed yesterday across Iraq. At least 23 people died when a suicide bomber struck a Shiite family wake in the restive province of Diyala yesterday, raising the day’s death toll in violence-plagued Iraq to more than 45.
“A man wearing a suicide belt walked into the Shiite wake and just blew himself up,” said Capt. Ahmed Abdallah of the local police in Khalis, 80 kilometers northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province. He told AFP at least 23 people were killed and 17 wounded.
The province, which is religiously and ethnically mixed, has seen some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq in recent weeks, believed to be the work of insurgents who fled a major security crackdown in Baghdad. More than 25 other people were killed in attacks elsewhere in the country.
Meanwhile, prosecutors alleged yesterday that a US lieutenant colonel gave the daughter of a detainee programs from a government computer in Iraq as a hearing began to determine if the officer must stand trial for charges that include the capital offense of aiding the enemy.
Lt. Col. William H. Steele, a reservist from Virginia serving full time, is accused of providing an unmonitored cell phone to detainees, fraternizing with a prisoner’s daughter, illegally storing and marking classified material, maintaining an inappropriate relationship with an interpreter, possessing pornographic videos, failure to obey an order and dereliction of duty regarding government funds.
The most serious allegation, aiding the enemy, was tied to Steele’s time as a commander at the jail at Camp Cropper and could carry a death sentence. The camp is an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged. “He had a conversation with one of the detainee’s daughters. He gave her a box containing some computer programs and computer sheets,” Lt. Col. Quentin Crank testified during the Article 32 hearing at Camp Victory, the main US military base on the western outskirts of Baghdad.
