One year on attacks continue
2004-03-20 10:43
Baghdad - Attacks on civilians and US-led coalition troops continued in Iraq amid warnings of "some really bad days to come," as the country marked on Saturday the first anniversary of the war to oust Saddam Hussein.
Following a series of blasts at Baghdad hotels in recent days, rockets were fired overnight into the large compound housing of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and a US soldier was wounded in northern Iraq.
No casualties were reported at the compound, the site of frequent rocket attacks, while the US soldier was hurt on Friday in the city of Mosul when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the convoy he was travelling in.
Police too have been targeted. One officer was shot dead early Saturday at a checkpoint near the northern city of Kirkuk, and a blast rocked the police station in Karbala to the south causing heavy damage but no casualties.
The attacks come as US military and civilian officials multiply their warnings that more spectacular attacks are likely as the June 30 date for a return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people approaches.
"I expect in the run-up period to the transition of June 30 that we will have some really bad days," Iraq's US civilian administrator Paul Bremer told reporters on Friday.
More than 170 people died in co-ordinated strikes on Shiite Muslim shrines in the cities of Karbala and Baghdad on March 2, and seven people were killed in a suicide bombing outside a hotel in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday.
Two journalists working for Al-Arabiya television were killed after their vehicle came under fire from US troops, apparently for not stopping as ordered at a checkpoint.
As anti-war protests were held around the world, Iraqis themselves had announced almost nothing to mark the day a year ago when US-led forces invaded their country to topple Saddam.
A small rally, a phenomenon that has virtually become a weekly ritual, was held in Baghdad after Friday prayers, but no major commemoration was scheduled.
- AFP