At least six Iraqis killed by blast in shopping district

A CAR BOMB exploded in an upmarket shopping district of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least six Iraqis and setting fire to an apartment building, in a surge of violence that has left at least 130 people dead since a new government was formed last week.

US and Iraqi forces have detained 84 suspects in Baghdad since Sunday. An additional 52 suspects were detained yesterday in a joint operation in the Diyarah area, south of the capital.

The attacks are blamed on an insurgency believed largely made up of members of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, who dominated Iraq for decades under Saddam Hussein but were mainly shut out of a partial new Cabinet announced last Thursday.

Meanwhile, Australia formed a team of diplomats, defence staff and police who will attempt to free an engineer seized by insurgents, but the government had a blunt message for the kidnappers: Australia will not remove its troops from Iraq or pay any ransom.

In a tape released on Sunday, a man identified himself as Douglas Wood, 63, an Australian working in Iraq, and appealed for the withdrawal of US-led troops. Two people wearing masks pointed weapons at him.

“Please help me. I don’t want to die,” Mr Wood said, his voice cracking with emotion in the video, aired repeatedly yesterday on Australian television. On the tape, the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

In the tape, Mr Wood appealed to US President George W Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard to pull their soldiers out of Iraq and leave the country to Iraqis to look after themselves.

That’s not going to happen, Mr Howard said.

“Everybody knows the position of the Australian government in relation to hostage demands.

“We can’t have the foreign policy of this country dictated by terrorists.”

Since Thursday, when Iraq’s interim government finally appointed a partial Cabinet after three months of political infighting, at least 130 people, including 11 Americans and one British soldier, have been killed in bombings, ambushes and other attacks.

The worst toll in the recent spate of violence came on Sunday when a suicide attacker detonated an ambulance loaded with explosives at a funeral for a Kurdish Democratic Party official, killing 25 people and wounding more than 50 in Tal Afar, 90 miles east of the Syrian border.

The US military confirmed yesterday that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber. US and Iraqi forces imposed a curfew in Tal Afar yesterday and were preventing vehicles from entering or leaving the city, provincial deputy governor Khisru Goran said. Yesterday, a car bomb exploded in an upmarket shopping district in southern Baghdad and set fire to a six-story apartment.

Six civilians were killed and seven wounded in the explosion, which missed a police patrol in the area.

In eastern Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near a passport office, killing three Iraqis, including two policemen, and wounding six.

A roadside bomb also killed a British soldier in southern Iraq, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said.

Officials identified the soldier as 24-year-old Anthony John Wakefield, from the 12th Mechanised Brigade, and said he died in Amarah. A total of 87 British troops have been killed since the war started in 2003.

In northern Iraq, four people were killed and seven injured when a car bomb exploded near a US military convoy east of Yarmuk, said Dr Baha al-Din al-Batri at al-Jamhuri Hospital in nearby Mosul.