Car bomb kills nine in Iraq
2004-06-06 21:23
Baghdad, Iraq - A car bomb outside an American base killed nine people on Sunday and injured 30 others and insurgents blasted Iraqi police stations in a Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad and in a town south of the capital.
One of the police stations - in Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood - was blown up on Sunday after insurgents raked the building with gunfire, ordered Iraqi police to leave, planted explosives and detonated them.
Meanwhile, a US security company confirmed Sunday that four of their employees - two Americans and two Poles - were killed the day before in an ambush on the main road to Baghdad airport.
The company, Blackwater USA, lost four employees in an ambush last March in Fallujah that triggered the bloody three-week siege of the restive Sunni Muslim city.
The stepped-up attacks raise questions about the capability of Iraqi forces to control public order after sovereignty passes to a new interim government at the end of this month.
Iraq's new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, told BBC television that military decisions taken after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty must be approved by the Iraqi government.
Blueprint for power transfer
The UN security council is considering a US-British resolution on the blueprint for the power transfer, including the thorny issue of how much control the Iraqis will exert over multinational military operations.
On Monday, the council will hear from UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who helped put together the interim government that will assume power on June 30.
"We're getting near the end of the process and we'd like to vote soon," said Richard Grenell, spokesperson for the US mission to the United Nations.
The car-bombing occurred at the gate of the Taji air base, a former Iraqi air force facility used by the US army about 20km north of Baghdad.
It was unclear if the explosion was a suicide attack. Ambulances, Humvees and Iraqi police rushed to evacuate the injured, while American troops secured the area.
Also Sunday, a vehicle carrying a crew from the Arabic-language satellite television broadcaster al-Jazeera was attacked by five gunmen near Iskandariyah south of Baghdad, the station said. The team managed to escape unharmed after a 20-minute chase.
Prisoners freed
Despite the continuing violence, the US released another 320 detainees on Sunday from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the centre of the scandal involving abuse of inmates by American soldiers.
It was the fourth major release since the scandal broke in April.
One bright spot, however, was the situation around the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kufa, where Iraqi police have been reasserting their control from al-Sadr's gunmen after nearly eight weeks of fighting.
The US agreed to a request from the Najaf governor to keep American troops away from the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf and the mosque in Kufa where al-Sadr preaches to give Iraqi security forces a chance to ease tensions.
US officials said they agreed with the request after receiving assurances that al-Sadr's militia had been significantly weakened in weeks of clashes with American forces.
1 000 militiamen killed
In Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Hertling, deputy commander of the 1st armoured division, said US troops had killed more than 1 000 militiamen in fighting in Najaf, Karbala and Kut - Shiite cities where al-Sadr's gunmen had been active.
Al-Sadr launched his uprising in early April after the US-run occupation authority closed his newspaper, arrested a key lieutenant and announced a warrant for his arrest in the April 2003 murder of a moderate cleric in Najaf.
Shiite religious and political leaders convinced al-Sadr to pull his troops off the streets in return for assurances that the future of his militia and the status of the arrest warrant would be discussed in future talks with the clerical hierarchy.
- AP