Gunmen kill 12 Iraqi workers
2005-10-24 13:19
Baghdad - Twelve Iraqi building workers were gunned down, said police on Monday as the United States death toll neared 2 000 since the invasion, heightening pressure on President George W Bush about the US role in the violence-ravaged country.
With the insurgency showing little sign of abating, Iraqi officials were continuing to tally votes from the referendum on a new post-Saddam Hussein constitution with full results still not known, nine days after the vote.
The electoral commission said it would release results from a 14th province on the charter, which had exacerbated the country's deep ethnic divisions.
It was not known if the results were from Nineveh, a Sunni-dominated province in northwestern Iraq that could decide whether the charter had been approved.
Two-thirds majority
Although the constitution appeared headed for victory with overwhelming support from Shi'ites and Kurds, it could be scuttled by Sunni Arabs if they mustered a two-thirds majority against in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Sunni Arabs, once powerful under Saddam, but now on the political sidelines after largely boycotting elections in January, feared federalist provisions in the constitution could lead to the break-up of the country and leave Iraq's oil wealth in the hands of the majority Shi'ites and Kurds.
Police said on Monday that violence had been relatively low since the October 15 referendum, but on Sunday 12 workers on a building site were killed and their foreman kidnapped.
New government building
The workers, who belonged to three families from the region, were working on the construction of a new government building in Jorf al-Sakhr, about 50km south of Baghdad.
Security sources said another 13 Iraqis, including two small children, were killed on Sunday in a series of attacks across the country that also wounded more than 30 people, among them five US soldiers.
On Saturday, the US military announced the death of four of its troops in Iraq, moving the overall toll since the US-led invasion of March 2003 closer to the psychologically significant total of 2 000.
The latest deaths brought to 1 991 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq.
Role of vice-president Dick Cheney
The New Yorker magazine reported that In Washington, former US national security advisor Brent Scowcroft unveiled new evidence of divisions among Republicans about the Iraq war and particularly the role of vice-president Dick Cheney.
Scowcroft said the promotion of US-style democracy should not be used as an excuse to use force abroad, as he launched a rare open attack on Cheney.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa was in Iraq to try to win support for a planned national reconciliation conference with the aim of weakening the deadly insurgency that had raged since the invasion.
Mussa, secretary general of the 22-member Arab League, won a standing ovation after addressing the Kurdish parliament on Sunday.