At least two people were killed and 13 others were wounded on Friday morning when gunmen in cars and a minibus opened fire on a crowd of labourers gathered in a Baghdad square, medics and security officials said.
The attack, in the southeastern Al-Jadidah district, followed a suicide car bombing on Wednesday morning in the northern Baghdad district of Kadhimiyah against another group of labourers.
About 80 people, most of them Shi’ites waiting to be hired for a day of construction work, were killed in that attack, the first of a series of car bombings which struck the capital on Wednesday and Thursday.
As they made their getaway on Friday, the gunmen in the minibus also shot dead a transport ministry employee and wounded two others who were driving nearby, a security official said.
In a third incident, a Shi’ite cleric, Sheikh Fadel Alami, was shot dead in his car in the same neighbourhood.
Nearly 150 people died in Wednesday’s nationwide violence, most of it centred in Baghdad, and at least 23 more, mostly policemen, died in a further wave of suicide bombings on Thursday.
Speaking at the United Nations on Thursday, the country’s President Jalal Talabani issued a desperate appeal for help in fighting terrorism.
”Iraq is not hesitant to openly and frankly say we are in desperate need of… your support for its efforts to fight terrorism,” Talabani told the UN summit of world leaders in New York.
”Today, Iraq is facing one of the most brutal campaigns of terror at the hands of the forces of darkness,” he said.
”They are killing hundreds of Iraqis, destroying their wealth and trying their best to stop their march towards the just goals of rebuilding their country.”
The president’s national security advisor, Muwaffaq Rubaie, speaking to the BBC, insisted for his part that such attacks were the exception and that most of the country was stable.
”Eighty percent of the country is secure, and there is no problem at all. It is only the 20% which are the hotspots,” he said.
”We feel that some of the areas, urban areas, small towns and cities, are ready for the Iraqi security services to assume responsibility for security,” he said.
Rubaie said more than 50% of Iraq’s security forces, from a total of just under 200 000, were ready to work on their own without the support of foreign expertise.
About 140 000 US troops, 8 000 British soldiers and contingents from a number of other coalition countries are working in Iraq, bearing the brunt of security while at the same time training Iraqi police and soldiers.
”As soon as the conditions are right, there will be a considerable reduction in the coalition forces,” said Rubaie.
Meanwhile, Syria on Thursday strongly condemned the Baghdad bomb attacks and said it was ready to do ”whatever it takes” to cooperate with US and Iraqi authorities in bringing security and stability to its neighbour.
In a statement released two days after United States President George Bush publicly warned Damascus to stop foreign fighters entering Iraq, the Syrian Embassy in Washington said the country was making ”great efforts” to seal the border between Syria and Iraq. – AFP
