Wave of bombings across pre-election Baghdad
Insurgents unleashed a wave of five car bombings across the capital, killing about a dozen people, despite stepped-up US and Iraqi measures to protect this month’s elections. North of Baghdad, insurgents killed a British security officer.
Iraqi police also said insurgents kidnapped a Japanese engineer, but on Thursday officials in Tokyo cast doubt on the report, saying they had no information on the incident.
Gunmen also fired on the Baghdad office of a major Kurdish party and two senior officials escaped assassination in separate attacks in the north.
The US military put the death toll from yesterday’s Baghdad bombings at 26, saying the number was based on initial reports at the scene. Iraqi officials gave a lower toll: 12 people killed in the bombings and one at the Kurdish office.
Sunni Muslim insurgents have threatened to disrupt the elections, and the five car bombings – four within a span of 90 minutes – underscored the grave threat facing Iraqis at this watershed in their history.
US and Iraqi forces have stepped up raids and arrests in Baghdad, Mosul and other troublespots as the elections approach.
Nevertheless, the attacks had little effect on preparations for the January 30 balloting, in which Iraqis will choose a 275-member National Assembly and regional legislatures.
Al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq claimed responsibility for the first of the day’s blasts, which occurred at about 7am at the Australian Embassy in the capital.
A truck packed with explosives blew up outside the concrete barriers in front of the embassy, killing two people and wounding several, including two Australian soldiers.
“A lion of monotheism and faith … carried out a martyrdom operation nearby the Australian Embassy,” the al-Qaida group in Iraq said in an internet statement. The group is led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has allied himself with Osama bin Laden’s terror network.
Thirty minutes after the embassy blast, another car bomb exploded at a police station next to a hospital in eastern Baghdad. The US military said 18 were killed there, but the Iraqi Interior Ministry put the death toll at six, including a policewoman.
A third car bombing struck at the main gate to an Iraqi military recruiting centre located at a disused airport in central Baghdad. Police said the driver told guards he was delivering potatoes and detonated his explosives at the gate, killing three Iraqi soldiers and injuring one American.
The US military also said a car bomb detonated south west of Baghdad International Airport, killing two Iraqi security guards. The fifth car bomb exploded around noon near a Shiite mosque and a bank in north Baghdad, killing one person and injuring another, police said.
