Two suicide bombers struck in Iraqi towns on Monday, claiming at least 27 lives, in a return to the grim familiarity of insurgency just a week after millions of Iraqis flocked to the polls.
It was the most violent day since the January 30 elections and signals that after a brief lull the attacks and kidnappings have restarted in earnest.
Iraq’s interior minister said it could be a further 18 months before Iraqi forces could properly secure their country.
Monday’s first bomber struck at the main police headquarters in Baquba, a mixed Shia and Sunni town 64km north of Baghdad. At least 15 people were killed and 17 injured. Witnesses said the bomber had tried to drive a car laden with explosives through the gate of the police station but instead hit a concrete blast wall and detonated near a crowd outside.
In the second attack a man apparently wearing a vest of explosives walked into a crowd of police standing outside the Jumhuri hospital in the northern city of Mosul. At least 12 people were killed and four injured. The blast blew a crater into the ground.
A militant group now called the al-Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq and led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi quickly claimed responsibility for both bombings in statements on the internet.
In separate attacks on Monday a mortar was fired at the city hall building in Mosul, killing one person and injuring three. Another militant group, Ansar al-Sunna, posted a video on the internet that appeared to show the murder of an Iraqi translator working for the US military.
A US soldier was killed and two others were injured by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad on Sunday, the military said.
Along with an increase in violent attacks has come a resumption of the kidnapping of foreigners. Four Egyptian telecoms engineers were kidnapped from their house in Baghdad on Sunday and were still missing on Monday.
The Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped in daylight on Friday at Baghdad University, was still missing. Two groups have claimed responsibility for her kidnap and both have threatened to kill her. Sgrena had been to interview refugees from the city of Fallujah who are camped near a mosque inside the university.
The brutal return to violence suggests that the elections and the formation of a new government will not immediately reduce the insurgency. In fact some argue that because turnout was low in Sunni communities, from where the insurgency has arisen, the violence is likely to continue despite the unfolding of the political process.
On Monday, Iraq’s interior minister, Falah al-Naqib, said it would be many months before Iraqis could take control of their own security. ”For me, as the minister of interior, for our internal security forces I would say within 18 months we will be able to have… full control of our internal security,” he said at a counter-terrorism conference in Saudi Arabia. He said the timing could also depend on the ”political situation” in Iraq.
Although full election results are not expected until later this week, the latest figures show that a Shia religious coalition is, as expected, likely to win the vote with a Kurdish alliance now coming in a strong second. Ayad Allawi, the US-appointed prime minister, is trailing in third.
The success of the political process will depend on how much the Shias and the Kurds try to include leaders from the Sunni community who feel ostracised by the electoral process. Partial election results released yesterday showed a poor turnout among Sunnis in one of the main Sunni-dominated provinces, Salahuddin, which includes Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit. The party that scored most votes in the province was, in fact, the Shia coalition.
Election officials admitted on Monday that at least 15 000 people had been unable to vote around Mosul because of violence and a shortage of ballot papers. There have been several days of protest by those who could not vote, many of whom were Christian. – Guardian Unlimited Â