America’s attempts to rebuild Iraq suffered a serious blow yesterday when Aqila al-Hashimi, one of the three women on the US-appointed Iraqi governing council, died five days after she was shot outside her Baghdad home.
The death of the respected foreign ministry official serves as a grim warning to any Iraqi seen to be involved in American-led efforts to reshape the country.
While attacks on the US military have become a daily occurrence, militants opposed to the occupation are widening their campaign to strike at softer civilian targets.
Yesterday morning a bomb exploded outside a Baghdad hotel used by the US television network NBC.
It killed a Somali hotel guard and injured two other people, including one of the network’s Canadian sound engineers.
Ms Hashimi, the only member of the council to have worked recently under Saddam Hussein’s regime, had turned away several of the bodyguards she was offered, and refused to travel in armoured cars.
She was attacked just hours before she was due to fly to New York for this week’s UN general assembly. Bullets caused serious injury to her abdomen, and she underwent several operations at a US military hospital.
A governing council statement said that Hashimi ”was martyred on the path of struggle for freedom and democracy in [the] building of this great nation. The heinous crime was committed by a godless and evil band known for its oppressions and injustices”.
Several members of the council have accused Saddam loyalists of the attack.
Tony Blair issued his own tribute to Hashimi. ”Her murderers and those who support them only seek to undermine the Iraqi governing council and destroy the efforts of all those rebuilding the country,” he said. ”They care nothing for Iraq but they will not win.”
In Baghdad yesterday US explosives experts were studying the scene of the attack on the hotel. It is on Arasat Street, which is filled with restaurants, expensive clothes shops and cigar emporiums.
The bomb was placed on the street, between the hotel and a generator. Several windows were shattered by the blast, which injured David Moodie, a soundman.
”I was awake,” he said. ”A chest of drawers in the room fell on me. I sleep in the room immediately above the generator, so I guess I was lucky.”
Although there were no signs on the building advertising NBC’s presence, there was a big white tent on the roof where the network’s correspondents stood for live shots. Al-Aike was widely known locally as a hotel housing American reporters.
In a separate attack yesterday eight US soldiers in a convoy through the northern city of Mosul were wounded in a sophisticated ambush.
Two roadside bombs detonated as the convoy passed, and when the military Humvees stopped men opened fire. Three soldiers suffered serious injuries and a Humvee was destroyed, the military said.
The US military also announced that a unit based in the troubled town of Falluja had been cleared of blame for their accidentally shooting dead eight Iraqi policemen two weeks ago.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said his soldiers acted ”within the construct of the military’s rules of engagement”. The full details of such investigations are rarely disclosed and US officers never talk about the precise wording of their ”rules of engagement”.
Gen Sanchez said the shooting lasted only a matter of seconds. ”The initial reports were clear. There was initial fire and it was a 30-second engagement. At the end of it, the policemen were dead,” he said.
His announcement contradicted the account given by several of the policemen injured in the attack. They said they did not fire on the US position but were attacked as they chased a suspected bandit.
They said they shouted in English to the soldiers that they were policemen, and said the barrage of gunfire continued for 45 minutes. The two police vehicles were destroyed and a nearby hospital was severely damaged by heavy-calibre bullets.
The Ministry of Defence said yesterday that a British Territorial Army soldier had died in a gun accident at a base in Shaiba, near Basra, in southern Iraq. Sergeant John Nightingale (32) from Leeds, died on Tuesday. His death was being investigated.
In another blow to US efforts to suggest that security is improving, the UN is to further reduce the numbers of its international staff in Iraq, following the second bombing at its headquarters in Baghdad in a month.
It had 600 staff in Iraq until the August 19 bombing which killed 22 people. Kofi Annan then ordered the international staff be cut significantly.
”Today there remain 42 in Baghdad and 44 in the north of the country, and those numbers can be expected to shrink further over the next few days,” Fred Eckhard, Annan’s spokesperson, said.
On Monday a second bombing at the HQ killed one person. – Guardian Unlimited Â