Iraq on Tuesday claimed a major coup with the killing of al-Qaeda’s number two in the country but insurgent attacks continued as a suicide bomber blew himself up at a police recruiting centre, leaving 10 dead.
Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was in Baghdad to inaugurate a training mission set up after overcoming deep divisions within the transatlantic alliance over the 2003 United States-led war to oust Saddam Hussein.
”We managed to kill the number two of al-Qaeda in Iraq,” National Security Adviser Muwaffaq Rubaie said.
Abu Azzam was shot dead on Monday in a joint US-Iraqi raid on a safe house in Baghdad following a tip-off from a local Iraqi, he said.
Rubaie described the operation as ”a major coup” that will likely hobble insurgent forces loyal to Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the country’s most-wanted man.
Abu Azzam, who was believed to be a Palestinian, infiltrated into Iraq in April, and ”we believe he must have killed 1 200 Baghdadis”, mostly in car bombings, Rubaie said.
US Army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan confirmed the killing, adding that two other men in the house at the time were also believed to have been killed in the raid.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq is held responsible for some of the more spectacular attacks in Iraq, along with multiple kidnappings and beheadings, and Zarqawi has declared ”all-out war” on the country’s majority Shi’ites.
Police officers die in attack
In the latest attack against security forces, 10 people were killed by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt who blew himself up in a crowd waiting outside a police recruitment centre in Baquba, a restive town north-west of the capital, police said.
Many of the victims were newly recruited police officers reporting for their first day at work, police said. Another 26 people were injured in the attack.
Violence is expected to excalate ahead of the October 15 vote on the draft Constitution, which a leading think tank warned has has deepened sectarian rifts and is likely to fuel the Sunni-led insurgency and hasten the country’s violent break-up.
”Instead of healing the growing divisions between Iraq’s three principal communities — Shi’ites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs — a rushed constitutional process has deepened rifts and hardened feelings,” the International Crisis Group said in a report.
Iraq ”appears to be heading toward de facto partition and full-scale civil war”, said the report, unless Washington makes ”a determined effort to broker a true compromise between Shi’ites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs”.
In Baghdad, Scheffer inaugurated the headquarters of the Nato training mission in the the high-security Green Zone, which also houses the US and British embassies and government offices.
”What you are doing is of great importance for this country and the development of democratic institutions,” he told Nato officers who will man the centre.
Nato is also setting up a new military academy in Al-Rustimayah on the outskirts of the capital to train Iraqi military officers.
The Nato operation aims to train 1 000 officers a year inside Iraq, with a further 500 receiving training outside the country. — AFP
