Ten people were killed in a string of suicide car bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday targeting the Australian embassy and Iraqi security forces as deadly violence escalated with elections just 11 days away.
China was scrambling to save the lives of eight nationals captured by Iraqi militants who have threatened them with death if Beijing does not clarify its position on Iraq.
The attacks and abductions occurred on the eve of a major Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, with Iraqi insurgents determined to taint the January 30 polls with bloodshed.
The New York Times reported United States government intelligence estimates predict that the post-election Iraqi administration will ask the US to set a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq.
Until now, Iraqi and US officials in Baghdad have said that no discussions have begun on the sensitive topic and Shiite political leaders have said they do not see an immediate withdrawal for the 150 000 US troops in Iraq.
The bombing rampage in Baghdad started just after 7am (4am GMT) when a suicide car bomb exploded outside an Australian military barracks for the nation’s embassy, witnesses and police said.
The driver rammed his vehicle against the sand barriers and blast walls in front of the building, killing two people and wounding six, police said.
No Australians were injured in the attack, an Australian foreign affairs spokesperson said from Canberra.
The bombing was a blunt message directed to one of pillars of the US’s so-called ”coalition of the willing” in Iraq.
Many coalition members have now pulled out their troops from Iraq or announced their intentions to do so, including Ukraine and Denmark.
The second bombing occurred just five minutes later in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Karrada and claimed the lives of six people, an interior ministry official said.
Another five people were wounded, medical sources said, adding one of the dead was a policewoman.
A US military spokesperson said the attack was near a police headquarters.
A third suicide car bomb exploded outside an Iraqi army base, killing two and wounding five, police and hospital sources said.
A white pick-up truck resembling those used by Iraqi security forces, pulled up outside the gates of an army base located in an old airport in western Baghdad, killing an Iraqi soldier and a civilian and wounding five, said police and hospital sources.
Meanwhile, China said it was ”taking all measures” to win the release of eight hostages and was contacting the Iraq Muslim Presbytery which helped in the release of seven Chinese kidnapped in the war-torn country last year.
The China Daily said the abductors were from the Movement of the
Islamic Resistance Nuamaan Brigade.
In a tape broadcast on Tuesday on Arab news networks and showing the eight Chinese nationals holding up their passports guarded by two hooded men, the kidnappers charged the group had ”worked with US forces in Iraq”.
Another video released on Tuesday showed a Lebanese held by a previously unknown group on charges of working with the US military. The embassy could not immediately confirm his capture.
Around 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since last April when the insurgency started to use hostage-taking as a tactic.
The latest hostage crisis came quick on the heels of another kidnapping episode that sent shockwaves through Iraq’s small Christian minority.
A Syrian Catholic archibishop nabbed in the northern city of Mosul on Monday afternoon was released by his captors less than 24 hours later.
Monsignor Basile Georges Casmoussa said after his release he had been treated well, and that the kidnappers had captured him by mistake and did not request a ransom for his release.
His statement contradicted earlier declarations by a senior prelate who said money was being collected to free him, as well as his own driver’s statement.
The crisis raised the spectre of growing sectarian strife ahead of the elections, although most of the ethnic-torn country’s Christian leaders downplayed the kidnapping, blaming criminal gangs.
On Tuesday, a suicide car bomber killed himself and two others at a checkpoint near the headquarters of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) — the Shiite political frontrunner in the elections.
Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group claimed responsibility for the attack in an internet statement.
Iraq’s Interior Minister Falah Naqib warned the country risked sliding into civil war if the Sunni minority boycotted the elections.
The country’s insurgency is fueled by the Sunni Muslim population’s resentments over the rise to power of Iraq’s long-oppressed Shiite majority.
An electoral debate so far subdued by relentless violence and fear of insurgent reprisal for participation in the electoral process started gathering steam Tuesday.
US-backed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi staked the hopes of the Iraqi National Accord — his party — on his reputation for tough security policies, setting out its platform for the polls.
His party also accused policemen loyal to the Shiite list of abusing their position to intimidate voters in the majority community’s southern heartland.
In Washington, US Secretary of state-designate Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that problems needed to be solved over the training of Iraq’s fledgling security services. – Sapa-AFP