Four Iraqi civilians die in roadside bomb blast

Militants targeted a US patrol with a roadside bomb today in the northern city of Mosul, killing four nearby civilians, while the US military reported that a Marine died in action in a strife-riven western province.

Hospital officials citing witnesses said insurgents hit a US patrol with a jerry-rigged bomb in a north-western neighbourhood of Mosul, damaging a Humvee as it crossed a bridge and killing four civilians in a car near the blast.

It was not clear if US troops suffered casualties. US military officials weren’t immediately available for comment.

Mosul residents said five mortar shells landed in a Kurdish enclave of the ethnically mixed city 225 miles north-west of Baghdad, injuring one.

The dead US Marine, assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed yesterday in Anbar province, which contains the flashpoint cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the US military said in a statement.

No further details were given. The Marine’s name was being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Gunmen in Baghdad killed a policeman as he drove to work early today in the southern Dora neighbourhood, said police Lt. Col. Hafidh Al-Ghrayri.

Insurgents have stepped up attacks on Iraq’s army and police – fledgling security forces the US military says must keep better control of the country.

In neighbouring Jordan, King Abdullah yesterday ordered the return of Jordan’s top diplomat in Iraq, a day after the two neighbours withdrew their envoys in a dispute over the infiltration of insurgents across the border, the official Jordanian news agency reported.

Officials at Iraq’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on whether the country would reinstate its representative to Jordan.

Petra reported that the king ordered the Jordanian charge d’affaires to return to the embassy in Baghdad “to keep the good relations between the two brotherly countries”.

Iraq and Jordan engaged in a tit-for-tat withdrawal of envoys on Sunday in a dispute over Iraqi claims Jordan was failing to stop would-be insurgents from slipping across the border and allegations that a Jordanian had carried out a deadly suicide attack this month.

Both countries said the diplomats were being recalled for “consultations”.

In a bid to heal the rift, Jordan’s Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez met outgoing Iraqi President Ghazi Al Yawar and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari yesterday in Algiers, Algeria, where they are attending the Arab summit that starts today.

Petra quoted Fayez in Algiers as condemning the insurgency in Iraq and saying: “Terror knows no religion or nationality and Jordan has faced several terrorist attempts targeting its security and stability.”

Tension between the two countries boiled over last week. At one point, Iraqi demonstrators angered over the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a deadly suicide bombing hoisted the Iraqi flag at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad.

And the leading political party, the United Iraqi Alliance, claimed Jordan was allowing insurgents to cross into Iraq.

This morning, residents in Baghdad’s Karradah neighbourhood surveyed homes splattered with shrapnel in a mortar barrage late yesterday that knocked out windows and felled walls. No casualties were reported.

Yesterday, the US military outlined two joint raids by US and Iraqi forces that netted a total of 43 insurgents. One was carried out before dawn in Kirkuk, taking into custody 13 people believed tied to the fatal attack against a local police officer, then the bombing of his funeral procession that left three more officers dead.

Seeking to seal a political deal after the January 30 elections, the Shiite-clergy’s spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was expected to meet tomorrow with Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader likely to become Iraq’s next president.

The Kurds want the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk to be returned to the autonomous Kurdistan region immediately after the government convenes, but an official from al-Sistani’s office said the spiritual leader wanted the country’s new National Assembly to decide that in Iraq’s future constitution.

Former dictator Saddam Hussein conducted ethnic cleansing in Kirkuk and the surrounding region, driving Kurds from their homes and replacing them with Iraqi Arabs.

A senior member of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, Ahmad Chalabi, told Al-Arabiya television the Kurds also wanted the powerful ministry of oil position in the new government Cabinet.

Shiites won 140 of the 275 seats in the new National Assembly. The Kurds, with 75 seats, emerged as a main powerbroker, but the two groups have been unable to come to an agreement over Kirkuk.

Shiites make up about 60% of Iraq’s 26 million people, while Sunni Arabs make up about 20%.

Kurds, who are Sunni but mostly secular, are another 15 to 20%.