The death toll from suicide car bombings in Iraq continued to rise on Monday with at least 13 people killed in Baghdad and Mosul in the last two days, as the United States and Iraqi army siege of Fallujahh continued unabated.
A car bomb detonated on a bridge in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday morning, killing five Iraqis and wounding 15 others, the US military said.
Reports said the suicide car bomber collided with another car setting off a giant blaze that damaged several other vehicles. Another car bomber hit a civilian convoy in the same city on Monday, killing one and wounding four others.
In Baghdad, seven people are now known to have died and more than 20 injured when a car bomb exploded outside a cafe popular with Iraqi police near the Australian embassy.
Witnesses said the policemen were eating a meal to mark the end of the daily fast during Ramadan when the blast happened, scattering metal, glass and body parts over a large area.
Outside Fallujahh, American marines maintained their siege of the city, continuing a military push that began on Friday and appeared to be laying the groundwork for an attempt to retake the city from insurgents. US and Iraqi authorities released Sheikh Khaled al-Jumeili, the chief negotiator for the city, who was arrested on Thursday when peace talks broke down after city leaders rejected demands from the Iraqi Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi, to hand over ”foreign terrorists,” including the Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
He said peace talks to end the standoff in the city would remain suspended as a protest against his detention by US troops, who had accused him of representing the militants.
Fallujah clerics insist that Zarqawi, whose Tawhid and Jihad movement has claimed responsibility for multiple suicide car-bombings and hostage beheadings including that of the British contractor Ken Bigley, is not in the city.
”The fact is that I am negotiating on behalf of Fallujah people — civilians, kids, women — who have no power but through being represented by somebody. Since the situation has got up to this, each can go wherever they want and we don’t need to talk about negotiations,” he said in an interview on Al-Arabiya TV.
But Kassim Daoud, Iraq’s national security adviser, insisted on Monday there would be an offensive against the city unless militants were handed over.
He would not be drawn on the timing of any major attack, saying only: ”We have a timetable and we will stick to it.”
Iraq’s interim government also confirmed that a nationwide arms amnesty will be declared next week, as they announced a cash-for-weapons scheme already under way in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a stronghold for Shiite militants, had been extended to Thursday. It was unclear whether money would be exchanged for weapons under the new amnesty.
Meanwhile, the foreign hostage crisis in the country continued on Monday, with militant group claiming it had killed two Macedonian hostages it accused of spying for the US.
The Arabic television station Al-Jazeera said it had received a video tape showing the killing of the two men accompanied by a statement from the Islamic Army in Iraq stating they had been seized a few days ago as they were leaving a US base. There was some better news when an Australian journalist held hostage in Baghdad for 24 hours over the weekend was released unharmed.
John Martinkus, a reporter with SBS television, was kidnapped outside his hotel in Baghdad as he was about to leave Iraq, having just completed his assignment.
It has emerged that the former top US commander in Iraq complained last winter to the Pentagon that a poor supply situation was threatening the army’s ability to fight.
The Washington Post said Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez wrote in a letter to top army officials that the lack of key spare parts for tanks, helicopters and other systems was such a severe problem that ”I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low.” – Guardian Unlimited Â