Baghdad’s deputy police chief assassinated

Dusan Stojanovic, Baghdad

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle is one of the more heavily armoured US military vehicles, suggesting that the roadside bomb was more powerful than those typically used in recent months.

The US Defence Department said last week that insurgents were increasing the size and power of the bombs they plant as they escalate their attacks before the January 30 election.

Four US soldiers also were wounded in the blast. It came four days after another powerful roadside bomb hit a Bradley, killing all seven US soldiers inside and destroying the vehicle.

Also yesterday, a roadside bomb attack in Samarra hit a joint US-Iraqi patrol, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding one Iraqi soldier and two Americans.

On Sunday, a US soldier assigned to Task Force Baghdad was killed by a roadside bomb, while a marine was killed in action in the volatile Anbar province.

Yesterday’s deaths brought the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 to at least 1,355, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,058 have died as a result of hostile action.

Scores of police and regional government officials have been assassinated in recent months, part of the insurgents’ campaign to try to instill fear ahead of the upcoming vote and to hunt down people perceived as collaborating with the US-led coalition. Last Tuesday, gunmen killed the governor of Baghdad, Ali al-Haidari, and six of his bodyguards.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said authorities have captured 147 suspected insurgents throughout Iraq, including the leader of an insurgent group just days after he took over for the previous chief, who was detained two months ago.

Mr Allawi identified the man as Raad al-Doury. He took over the top post of Jaish Muhammad, which is Arabic for Muhammad’s Army, from Moayad Ahmed Yasseen, who was detained in November. Mr Allawi has accused Jaish Muhammad of killing and beheading a number of Iraqis, Arabs and foreigners in Iraq.

“Moayad Ahmed Yasseen is still confessing to his crimes and he will stand trial soon,” Mr Allawi said. “Every day the terrorists name a new leader we capture him and they will stand trial.”

Mr Allawi said Iraqi security forces were getting stronger every day.

Just hours before he spoke, gunmen shot and killed Baghdad’s deputy police chief, Brigadier Amer Ali Nayef, and his son, Lieutenant Khalid Amer, also a police officer. They were slain in Baghdad’s south Dora district while travelling in a car on their way to work, Interior Ministry spokesman Captain Ahmed Ismail said.

Gunmen sprayed machine-gun fire from two cars driving parallel with the police chief’s vehicle close to his home before fleeing, police said. The two were alone in their car.

In a separate attack, a suicide car bomb exploded in the courtyard of a police station in southern Baghdad, killing at least four

policemen and wounding 10 others, police and witnesses said. A fake police car packed with explosives was used in the attack.

The explosion occurred at 8am in the Zafarniyah district, police commissioner Abdul Khaleq Hussein said. Witnesses said the explosion occurred during the shift change, and an Associated Press photographer saw a number of bodies inside the courtyard.

In other violence, the US military said its forces accidentally killed a 13-year-old Iraqi girl and wounded a 14-year-old boy near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, when a 1st Infantry Division observation post “engaged an area producing unidentified smoke outside of a local forward operating base.”

An investigation is underway.