Security officer killed as strikes against Iraqis continue to mount

A SERIES of roadside attacks in Iraq killed a local security officer and wounded at least 13 other people yesterday as insurgents mounted fresh strikes against Iraqis seen as collaborating with US forces.

The attacks come a day after thousands of Shi’ite Muslims protested in the south to demand the US-appointed provincial governor’s resignation.

The protest by some 10,000 people in the town of Nasiriyah was the latest sign of the growing unrest of Iraq’s majority Shi’ites who were repressed for decades by Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime.

Sunni insurgents loyal to the captured dictator are blamed for much of the ongoing violence in the country.

In Iraq’s north, guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a checkpoint manned by the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps south of the city of Kirkuk, killing one member of the force, the Kirkuk police chief said.

In central Iraq, explosives hidden in a cart carrying diesel fuel was detonated as a Defence Corps patrol made its way through the town of Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad, wounding 10 people, two of them seriously.

And in the southern city of Basra, where British troops are responsible for security, a roadside bomb exploded as a convoy carrying civilian officials was passing, wounding three Iraqi bystanders, a spokesman for the British forces said.

The Baquba blast was the latest in a string of attacks against Iraqi security forces in the restive town on the eastern edge of the “Sunni triangle” area, the hotbed of the 10-month anti-coalition insurgency.

As US forces have ratcheted up strikes against insurgents in recent months, guerrillas have increasingly targeted Iraqi police, the Defence Corps and others seen as easy targets.

Since May 1 last year, when Washington declared major combat over in Iraq, more than 300 Iraqi police have been killed in shootings, bombings or suicide attacks.

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the overall commander of US forces in Iraq, has expressed concern about the growing focus on softer targets as attacks on coalition forces decline.

At the same time, he said he was increasingly worried by the threat of foreign insurgents entering Iraq.