US push fails to halt insurgency as attacks kill 37

IRAQ’S insurgency appeared unfazed by two US-led military offensives, mounting separate attacks that killed at least 37 people, mostly security forces, and wounded scores of others yesterday.

The largest one occurred in the northern Kurdish city of Irbil. A suicide car bomber dressed as a policeman crashed into a large group of traffic police officers gathered for morning roll call, killing 15 and wounding more than 100 others, police and hospital officials said.

The US-led Operations Spear and Dagger, which began over the weekend and which are aimed at destroying militant networks near the Syrian border and north of Baghdad, appeared to be winding down. US and Iraqi forces have killed about 60 insurgents with 100 captured so far, while one marine has been killed and three others wounded.

Other insurgent violence throughout the country killed 22 yesterday, including a US soldier killed by a roadside bomb in northern Iraq. A suicide car bomber ripped through a convoy carrying a Kurdish town’s security director, killing him and three of his bodyguards, said Anwar Kokoyei, a senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan political party.

The attacked happened in Halabja, the same town where Saddam Hussein and other former regime officials will face trial for their alleged roles in a 1998 poison gas attack that killed at least 5,000 people.

Another suicide car bomber rammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing five soldiers and wounding three, army and police officers said. The rate of insurgent attacks has risen dramatically since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shi’ite-led cabinet on April 28. At least 1,189 people have been killed since then, according to military, police and hospital reports.

Sunni Arabs are believed to make up the core of Iraq’s insurgency and many of them boycotted historic elections in January, leaving them sidelined and embittered by the rise of the Shi’ites and the Kurds - two communities that account for about 80% of the country’s estimated 26 million people.

The insurgency has especially targeted Iraqi security forces, because they are seen as collaborators of the US and Shi’ite-led governments. Extremists have also started threatening fellow Sunni Arabs, as some leaders of the minority Muslim sect showed a readiness to join the political process.