23 killed in Iraqi attacks

Rebels launched multiple attacks on Iraqi police posts around the city of Tikrit killing 23 people – including 18 policemen – a day after the major Sunni Muslim political party pulled out of the campaign for the January 30 elections citing the deteriorating security situation.

Twelve policemen died when gunmen attacked a station 12 miles south of the city, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, said Arkan Mohammed, a local government official.

Militants launched four other attacks on various police checkpoints in Tikrit, killing five Iraqi officers and injuring three others, said Sergeant Robert Powell, of the Tikrit-based US 1st Infantry Division.

In Baqouba, a town 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, unidentified gunmen assassinated Captain Na’em Muhanad Abdullah, a local police commander, and wounded three other men, a spokesman said.

In another blow to plans to hold the ballot as scheduled, the largest Sunni political group withdrew from the race yesterday, only hours after a suicide car bomber killed 15 people in Baghdad in an attempt to assassinate the head of Iraq’s strongest Shiite party.

The rebels campaign to disrupt the elections for a new constitutional assembly has steadily escalated in recent weeks, and most Sunni parties and religious groups have already decided to boycott the ballot, calling for a postponement of the vote until the security situation stabilises.

Insurgents have mainly targeted members of the interim government’s security forces – whom they consider to be collaborators with the American occupation forces – killing hundreds in the past two months.

Elsewhere today, a car bomb exploded in the village of Muradiya, 18 miles north-east of Baghdad, killing five civilians and wounding dozens, said Dr Ahmed Fouad of the Baqoubah General Hospital.

A roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi National Guard patrol in Baqouba, injuring four guardsmen, Hussein added.

In the central city of Samarra a suicide attacker detonated his car in the city centre wounding 10 people, including three children, said police Major Saadoun Ahmed Matroud.

Shortly after the explosion, people were told through mosque loudspeakers to stay indoors because of a curfew, and US and Iraq troops set up roadblocks, witnesses said.

Meanwhile, in an audiotape broadcast yesterday by the Al-Jazeera satellite television, a man purported to be Osama bin Laden endorsed Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as his deputy in Iraq and called for a boycott of the elections.

In urging a boycott of the election, the voice on the Al-Jazeera tape described al-Zarqawi as the “emir” of al-Qaida in Iraq and called on Muslims there “to listen to him”.

Last month al-Zarqawi declared allegiance to bin Laden and changed the name of his group, which is responsible for numerous car bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq, to al-Qaida in Iraq.

Shiites comprise by far the biggest community in Iraq, with Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds making up 20% each. Many people in Iraq and abroad fear the legitimacy of the election will be brought into question if Sunnis refrain from voting.

Shiite political and religious leaders also have sharply criticised the US-led response to the growing insurgency, saying Iraqis themselves would have been more effective in countering the mainly Sunni rebels.

But Shiite leaders also strongly back going ahead with next month’s vote even though they have been repeatedly targeted by the insurgents.

Since the modern Iraqi state was set up by British colonialists in the aftermath of the First World War, it has always been dominated politically and economically by the Sunni minority, and Shiite leaders are eager to translate their numerical superiority into political power after the January 30 vote.