Guerrilla fighters attacked an Iraqi ministry in central Baghdad on Thursday with mortars and machine guns in one of the most dramatic shows of force by militant groups in the capital since the United States invasion in 2003.
A deputy minister in the Shi’ite-run Health Ministry and a police source said about 30 unidentified gunmen were involved.
”Terrorists are attacking the building with mortars, machine guns and we can even see snipers. Any employee who leaves the building will be killed,” Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily said from his office, his voice edged with emotion.
An Interior Ministry source said gunmen had surrounded the ministry, north of central Baghdad on the mainly Shi’ite eastern bank of the Tigris, and were fighting Iraqi security forces.
Some casualties had been taken to hospital, he said, and three mortar rounds landed in the ministry compound.
The source said the gunmen had attempted to break into the ministry compound but had been driven back. Zamily complained that army commanders had not responded to calls for help.
Zamily survived an assassination attempt this week, when gunmen attacked his convoy and killed two of his bodyguards.
A day earlier, his fellow deputy minister Ammar al-Saffar, from another Shi’ite party, was abducted from his home in a nearby Sunni district by men in camouflage uniform. He has not been heard of since.
The Health Ministry is controlled by Shi’ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr. While many police and army units are suspected of being loyal to Shi’ite armed groups, some units also have links to Sunni leaders.
Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia, which has its Baghdad stronghold in the nearby Sadr City slum, is accused by the once-dominant Sunni minority of some of the worst death-squad killings, in which hundreds of people a week are dying in Baghdad.
The health minister flatly denied a United Nations report on Wednesday that said a record 3 700 civilians died in violence in October. The real figure was about a quarter of that, Ali al-Shimeri said, an account at odds with data from other sources and with recent statistics from the ministry itself.
Sectarian violence
Sectarian passions have flared this month, notably over attacks and kidnaps by men in uniform. Dozens of civil servants were abducted last week from the Sunni-run Higher Education Ministry by suspected Shi’ite militiamen from Sadr City.
Shi’ite leaders denied assertions by the Sunni minister that more than 60 of his staff and visitors were still missing.
A car bomb killed two people and wounded 10 in Sadr City on Thursday as the Health Ministry was being attacked. Four other explosions, including mortars, went off simultaneously in the same area, the Interior Ministry source said.
Zamily said the ministry was often attacked but Thursday’s was unusually sustained. He said militants seemed to be trying to forge a safe corridor to link the Sunni enclave of Adhamiya in east Baghdad to the mainly Sunni west bank of the river.
”We called the army commanders to intervene and stop the gunmen from attacking us but we got no reply. There is a big conspiracy by terrorists to separate east and west Baghdad.”
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, due to meet US President George Bush in Jordan, has vowed to disband militias loyal to fellow Shi’ite leaders like Sadr, a key ally, but he has resisted pressure from some in Washington to speed that up.
Demands are increasing among US politicians, particularly Bush’s Democratic opponents who now control Congress, for troops to start withdrawing next year, whether or not Maliki’s national-unity government starts to reverse a slide toward civil war. — Reuters