Mosque and bakery attacks kill at least 23

A CARBOMB exploded outside a Shi’ite mosque north-east of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens, a police official and witnesses said.

Also, masked men sprayed gunfire into a crowd at a bakery in a mostly Shi’ite neighbourhood in the capital, killing 11 people.

The violence came as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise visit and said Iraqis, not Americans, must defeat the country’s insurgency.

The bombing in Balad Ruz, 45 miles east of Baghdad, occurred as mosque services ended, killing 13 people and wounding 40, police colonel Tahseen Mohammed.

Residents reported that a truck loaded with vegetables and parked in front of the mosque looked suspicious, Mohammed said.

When Iraqi troops approached the truck, it exploded, he added.

But Brigadier Adel Moulan, the regional head of the Iraqi National Guard, reported only 12 killed and 23 wounded. He said the truck exploded as a guard patrol passed.

The bakery attack in the New Baghdad area occurred after gunmen in several cars blocked the street in front of the shop with their vehicles and entered the shop. They fired on the workers, killing 11 people, an Iraqi police investigator said.

Although the motive was unclear, the attack was the latest in a series of violent incidents since the January 30 national elections, raising questions whether the landmark balloting will lead quickly to stability in this fractured country.

On Thursday, insurgents ambushed Iraqi police who came to an area about 10 miles south-east of Baghdad to search for weapons. The Interior Ministry said 14 policemen were killed, 65 were wounded and six were missing after the two-hour gun battle. Four insurgents also died in the fighting, the ministry said.

Final election results have not been released, but partial figures indicate Shi’ite Muslims linked to the powerful clergy will have the largest number of seats in the 275-member National Assembly. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s ticket was running third behind a Kurdish alliance.

Iraqi officials said they need only a few days at most to complete counting the ballots. Officials had expected to announce a final tally by Thursday but later said the process had been delayed because of the need to recount votes from about 300 ballot boxes.

Elsewhere, an aide to Iraq’s most revered Shi’ite Muslim cleric was injured in an assassination attempt in Baghdad after receiving threats from militants opposing his support for Iraq’s elections, a relative said yesterday. Sheik Ammar al-Hilali, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was shot seven times by gunmen in two cars as he left sunset prayers at a mosque on Tuesday, said the relative, Ali al-Lafta.

The relative said Sheik al-Hilali had received many threats from Sunni Arab extremists. Mr Al-Sistani himself was a strong backer of the vote and even declared voting a duty for every man and woman, contributing to a huge turnout among Shi’ites, who comprise about 60% of Iraq’s estimated 26 million people.

However, many Sunni Arabs, estimated at 20% of the population, apparently stayed away from the polls, out of fear of insurgent attacks or in support of a boycott call by their clergy.

During Friday prayers at a mosque in a Sunni district of Baghdad, the preacher urged Iraqis to unite to “push out the enemy by any legitimate means”.

Mr Rumsfeld flew to the tense northern city of Mosul to meet with commanders and troops before travelling to Baghdad. In his address at the Mosul airfield, Rumsfeld told American troops: “You have shown that America is in fact a land of liberators, not a land of occupiers.”