In the latest attack, a bomb planted at the traffic police department in the Ghazaliya district of western Baghdad exploded early on Monday, killing a traffic policeman and a bystander, and wounding 10 other people, including seven traffic officers.
Insurgent attacks against Iraq’s usually unarmed traffic police have previously been rare since the reconstruction of the Iraqi security forces following the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
“The traffic police are security forces so they have to be armed with weapons to be able to defend themselves,” Lt. Gen. Ali Gaidan, commander of Iraq’s ground forces, told reporters at a news conference on Monday.
“The traffic police are not different from civilians because they don’t have weapons. They stand in the streets,” he said. “The terrorists target them because they are easy targets.” At least five traffic officers have been killed and 19 others have been wounded in the last five days in Baghdad, either by bombs or attacks by gunmen using silenced weapons.
“Targeting us is a crime against humanity,” said a traffic cop who said he was scared and asked not to be named. “We call on the government to find out which groups are targeting us.” The attacks come less than a month before the official end of US combat operations in Iraq. The US military expects to reduce its troop numbers to 50,000 troops by the end of this month end from about 60,000 now.
Overall violence has ebbed since the peak of sectarian warfare in 2006-7 but bombings and other attacks occur frequently - an average of about 15 a day across the country, US military officials say.
Insurgents appear to be trying to take advantage of the power vacuum since a March 7 parliamentary election that produced no clear winner. The long delay while Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions negotiate alliances for a parliamentary majority has raised fears of renewed violence.
Sectarian fighting exploded after Iraq’s 2005 parliamentary election, when politicians took more than five months to negotiate a new government.
Traffic police chiefs have equipped officers with a rifle at each intersection, in addition to putting police and military patrols nearby to protect the traffic cops from attack.
“Now we feel better after we received a gun. We can protect ourselves with police and army forces stationed near our intersection,” said a traffic policeman who was carrying a rifle in Baghdad’s Doura district. He asked to remain unidentified.
Two roadside bombs wounded four traffic policemen in Baghdad on Sunday. The day before, gunmen opened fire on a traffic police vehicle in the Hurriya district of the Iraqi capital, killing one officer and wounding another.
On Friday, an officer was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in Haifa Street in central Baghdad.
Some of the vulnerable officers believe militants are targeting them to sow chaos in the capital, a city of some 7 million people where streets with blast walls, detours and security checkpoints are often choked with traffic.
“I think the goal of targeting the traffic police is to create a state of fear, and to get them to leave their jobs and thus create chaos in Baghdad,” said a traffic police brigadier who asked not to be named.
“Targeting us is targeting order,” he said. “We achieve order in Baghdad’s streets.”
