Twelve people died and at least 50 were injured yesterday in two attacks by Iraqi insurgents in northern Iraq.
A car bomb killed nine and injured 45 at a police station in the northwestern city of Mosul in the latest of a series of suicide strikes on coalition forces or their local allies. Near the restive oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the northeast of the country, three US soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division died when a roadside bomb ripped through their convoy. A total of 522 US soldiers have so far been killed in the Iraq conflict, 364 in combat.
Witnesses in Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, said a suicide attacker drove through a barricade in front of the police station before blowing up his vehicle. The attacks came on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Many of the attacks in Mosul have been linked to Ansar ul-Islam, the Islamic militant group who were based in northern Iraq until last year’s war. Last week senior American officials said they believed that attacks by Muslim militants were being co-ordinated by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an experienced Jordanian-born activist with ties to European terror networks. Last month an operative with links to Osama bin Laden, was arrested while entering northern Iraq. Hassan Ghul, a Yemeni, is believed by US officials to have met with Zarqawi to plan attacks against US and coalition forces.
The Mosul attack appeared timed to cause maximum casualties. Saturday was pay day and the two-storey police station was crowded with staff at the time of the mid-morning blast
In Baghdad on Saturday, a bomb exploded under the car of a police colonel, slightly injuring five children in the street. In Kirkuk, which has been the site of significant inter-ethnic tension in recent months, unidentified gunmen shot and injured an ethnic Turkoman leader, and killed his assistant on Saturday.
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, has given the go-ahead for a team of experts to travel to Iraq to assess the feasibility of holding elections ahead of the 30 June deadline for the handover of sovereignty from the US-led coalition to an Iraqi government. The team are expected to arrive within days.
Annan pulled international staff out of Iraq last year after two suicide attacks on the UN headquarters in Baghdad. The most devastating attack, on 19 August, killed 22 people including the head of the UN mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The UN is returning to Iraq at Washington’s request, after US plans for the handover of sovereignty were rejected by Iraq’s leading Shia Muslim cleric.
The initial plan was for regional caucuses to select a transitional assembly by the end of May. The assembly would then pick a government to take over sovereignty by the end of June.
But Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, revered by much of Iraq’s 60% Shia majority, has said the new government should be directly elected. Washington’s view is that this is not possible with security so precarious. – Guardian Unlimited Â