Zarqawi attack on Green Zone kills 32

AT least 32 people were killed in attacks in Iraq yesterday, including bombings inside Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone said to have been claimed by the suspected al-Qaida chief in the country, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

The bloodshed comes only a day after Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warned the rebel city of Fallujah to surrender Zarqawi, accused of masterminding dozens of deadly attacks in Iraq and with a $25 million US bounty on his head.

It also came a day ahead of the expected start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. The attacks in the Green Zone killed at least seven people, including two US civilians, and wounded at least eight, a US officer said. At least one suicide bomber was involved, US officials said.

“Two lions from the ‘Martyrdom-seeking Brigade’ (suicide bombers), affiliated to the military wing of the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group, managed to enter the US embassy compound inside the Green Zone in the capital Baghdad,” said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed.

“This operation is one of the most successful operations carried out by your brothers in the Tawhid wal Jihad group, thank be to God,” said the statement signed by the group’s military wing. It was posted on an Islamist website.

The attacks targeted the so-called Green Zone Cafe and Green Zone Bazaar, where soldiers and civilians, both Iraqi and foreign, regularly go to eat and shop.

A young man who gave his name as Hassan, said he rushed to check on his brother, a vendor, and saw the cafe on fire.

“Except for a security situation like today, the Green Zone was the safest place in the world,” he said.

Minutes after the attack police and emergency sirens were heard going off in the area and a helicopter circled over the mountain of smoke that shot up on the western edge of the Green Zone.

Almost 20 minutes later, the US military said planes carried out air strikes on a suspected weapons’ storage facility and safe house in Fallujah for operatives of Zarqawi. The city’s main hospital reported receiving five dead and 16 wounded.

Two Iraqi army officers were shot dead as they drove through the restive town of Baquba, north-east of the capital, according to police. Fifteen Iraqi national guardsmen were killed in an overnight attack in Qaim near the Syrian border, according to a police officer there.

In Baghdad, one US soldier was killed and two wounded in an attack on the eastern side of the capital, the military said.

Also an investigative judge and a woman journalist working for a Kurdish TV station were gunned down outside their homes in separate attacks, medics and the interior ministry said.

“We have asked Fallujah residents to turn over Zarqawi and his group. If they don’t do it, we are ready for major operations in Fallujah,” Allawi told Iraq’s 100-member interim parliament on Wednesday.

Mr Allawi appears to have been emboldened by a successful US-Iraqi operation against rebels in Samarra early this month and the start last Monday of a disarmament programme by the militia of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr in his Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City.