A wave of car bombings shook the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people as rebels stepped up their offensive to block the January 30 national election. Other attacks were reported north and south of the capital, but the United Nations election chief said only a sustained onslaught can stop the ballot.
United States military officials put the death toll from the day’s violence at 26, based on initial field reports. Iraqi authorities said 13 people were killed — one in a drive-by shooting on a political party office and the other 12 in the bombings. The discrepancy could not be immediately resolved.
The violence began about 7am, when a bomb packed into a truck exploded outside the Australian embassy in Baghdad, killing two people. Two Australian soldiers were injured.
A half-hour later, another car bomb killed six at a police station located next to a hospital in eastern Baghdad.
A third car bombing struck at the main gate to an Iraqi military garrison located at a disused airport in central Baghdad. An officer at the Iraqi defence ministry said three Iraqi army troops were killed in that attack.
The US military also said a car bomb detonated south-west of Baghdad International airport, killing two Iraqi security guards.
Hours later, another car bomb went off in northern Baghdad at about noon near a bank and a Shi’ite Muslim mosque. Police said one person was killed and one killed at that bombing.
The al-Qaeda in Iraq terror group, led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed it was behind the blast at the Australian embassy in a statement posted on an Islamic website.
Elsewhere in the capital, insurgents in a car fired on a Baghdad office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, killing one of its members and wounding another, the union’s officials said.
Outside the capital, Major General Wirya Maarouf, the dean of a police academy in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, escaped an assassination attempt when gunmen opened fire on his convoy in the city of Irbil. One bystander was killed and another injured, said police Colonel Tharwat AbdulKarim.
In the northern city of Dahuk, a roadside bomb exploded near the convoy of provincial Governor Nejrivan Ahmed but he was not injured, AbdulKarim said.
An Iraqi police officer was killed on Wednesday in another car bombing in the largely Shi’ite city of Hillah south of Baghdad, the Polish military said.
Fresh clashes erupted on Wednesday between US troops and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul. A car bomb exploded beside a US convoy in the eastern part of the city, and two Iraqis were killed when American troops opened fire after the blast, witnesses said. There were no reported casualties among the Americans.
US and Iraqi officials had predicted a steady increase in violence in the run-up to the election, in which Iraqi voters will choose a National Assembly and provincial legislatures. Sunni Muslim insurgents have vowed to disrupt the ballot.
Also, in the city of Kirkuk, two human rights leaders were killed, officials said. Their bodies were found shot in the head and chest after being kidnapped on Tuesday, police said.
Carlos Valenzuela, the chief UN election adviser in Iraq, said the intimidation of electoral workers by guerrillas seeking to derail this month’s balloting is ”high and very serious”.
But Valenzuela told reporters on Tuesday that only a sustained onslaught by insurgents or the mass resignation of electoral workers will prevent this month’s national elections from going ahead.
US troops have stepped up raids across the country, arresting scores of suspected insurgents in hopes of aborting plans to disrupt the ballot.
On Wednesday, the US military acknowledged that its soldiers opened fire on a car as it approached their checkpoint, killing two civilians in the vehicle’s front seat. Six children riding in the backseat were unhurt.
It wasn’t clear from a military statement whether the two victims were the children’s parents.
”Military officials extend their condolences for this unfortunate incident,” the statement said.
In China, authorities warned people to avoid travelling to Iraq as diplomats tried to win the release of eight Chinese labourers abducted by Iraqi insurgents.
”Please don’t rashly go to Iraq, in order to avoid unforeseeable incidents,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.
The eight abducted Chinese, including two teenagers, were shown in a video released on Tuesday by insurgents. The foreign ministry said it has asked for help from Iraqi religious leaders who helped to win the release of other Chinese abducted last year.
The latest abductees are from the south-eastern coastal province of Fujian, which sends thousands of labourers each year to the Middle East and elsewhere. — Sapa-AP