A rchive Date
[ 28-01-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2005/01/23/911157-ap.html
More Iraqi polling sites bombed
By SAMEER N. YACOUB
January 28, 2005
BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraqi police fired on a car just as its driver set off a load of explosives Friday, ripping it apart and killing four policemen, as insurgents targeted polling sites across the country with just two days to go before historic elections.
Fighter jets thundered through the skies over the capital throughout the morning, in a sign the American military has increased its readiness to respond to any trouble during the vote. U.S. President George W. Bush, in an interview published in The New York Times on Friday, said he would withdraw the 150,000 U.S. forces from Iraq if the new government formed after Sunday's vote asks for a pullout. But Bush said he expected the country's new leaders would want multinational forces to stay.
"I've, you know, heard the voices of the people that presumably will be in a position of responsibility after these elections - although you never know," Bush said in an interview with the newspaper on Thursday. "But it seems like most of the leadership there understands that there will be a need for coalition troops at least until Iraqis are able to fight."
Friday's suicide car bombing rattled Baghdad's Dora neighbourhood. The southern district has become a flashpoint in recent days, with several street battles between insurgents and Iraqi national guard troops, and with assassinations of government officials.
Earlier this month, attackers shot dead Baghdad's deputy police chief, Brig. Amer Ali Nayef, and his son, also a police officer, as they drove through the Dora district on their way to work.
On Friday, police opened fire on the speeding car in an attempt to stop it just it burst into flames. Hours later, another car bomb exploded on the neighbourhood's main road, causing some damage to a school where voters are to cast ballots Sunday. No one was hurt.
In southern Iraq, meanwhile, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi police vehicle, killing one officer and wounding three others, said police Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaydi. The attack occurred in the town of Zubair, south of the port city of Basra.
In the north, in the city of Kirkuk, gunmen attacked a school to be used as a polling station. Iraqi police fired back and arrested the men, and one Iraqi officer was killed in the clash, said police Col. Muanis Abdullah.
On Friday, Iraqi police detained four men they say were involved in attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, an Interior Ministry official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the four, who are all from the central city of Samarra, were detained several days ago.
During several days of interrogation, they confessed to killing a number of Iraqi police and national guards officers, the official said.
Bombs blasted three more schools designated as polling sites in the city of Beiji, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad. No one was hurt in the explosions, which went off just before sunrise.
Two mortar shells landed on another school in Dora late Thursday, lightly damaging the building.
Militants also bombed another school in Mosul on Thursday night, a local official said. The blast shattered windows and blew doors off their hinges, but caused no casualties.
Schools, many of which are to be used as voting sites, have been heavily targeted by rebels seeking to ruin the balloting.
There have been no reported casualties from those attacks, most of which have happened at night, and students have been on vacation for more than a week.
Also Friday, insurgents shelled a U.S. Marine base south of Baghdad, injuring three American troops and three civilians, the military said. The mortar shells exploded inside Camp Kalsu, the main base of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Authorities on Thursday night found the bodies of four Iraqi national guardsmen who had been shot dead in the western, insurgent-plagued city of Ramadi, capital of the troubled Anbar province. Police believe the four had been kidnapped several days ago.
Claims of responsibility for the bloodshed continued to crop up on Islamic Web sites, which have posted grisly video footage of killings as part of their intimidation campaign.
The Islamic Army in Iraq said it attacked a voting centre in Ramadi with a car bomb and Katyusha rockets Thursday, killing an Iraqi national guard soldier. And the Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed it had killed an Iraqi policeman and two guards in the main street of Kirkuk on Thursday.
An al-Qaida affiliate led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi posted a video on the Internet on Thursday showing the murder of a candidate from the party of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The tape included a warning to Allawi personally: "You traitor, wait for the angel of death."
Al-Zarqawi and other Sunni Arab extremists have threatened to disrupt the weekend vote, when Iraqis are to choose a 275-member National Assembly and governing councils in the country's 18 provinces.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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