32 dead across Iraq yesterday

At least 32 people were killed yesterday across Iraq, including a prominent Sunni law professor assassinated by gunmen. Jassim al-Issawi was a former judge who put his name forward at one point to join the committee drafting Iraq’s constitution.

The assassination appeared aimed at intimidating Sunni Arabs willing to join Iraq’s efforts to create a stable political system.

The US military said three US soldiers were killed a day earlier during combat operations west of Baghdad near the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi. At least 1,727 members of the US military have died since the war began in 2003.

Three car bombs – clearly co-ordinated – went off almost simultaneously only blocks apart in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Shula where al-Issawi was killed only hours earlier.

Two bombs exploded in front of a pair of restaurants, killing at least 11 and wounding 28. “The body parts of the dead were scattered everywhere, along with fragments of broken glass from nearby shops and the meat from the meals,” said police Maj Musa Abdul Karim, who was at the scene.

“Blood was everywhere.”

The third car bomb exploded when a suicide bomber rammed a nearby bus station, killing at least 8 and wounding 20, police said.

About 15 minutes later, a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army patrol in a nearby suburb, killing at least four bystanders, police said. The dead included a woman and a child. No Iraqi soldiers were among the wounded.

A fifth car bomb targeting a US military convoy missed, killing instead three Iraqis and wounded seven in the northern city of Mosul, officials said.

Four Iraqis also were killed in two roadside bombs and a group of children drove their bicycles over a bomb planted beneath the ground in Baqouba, northeast of the capital. A nine-year-old boy was killed and two others, aged six and seven, were wounded.

Al-Issawi’s killing, potentially the most politically significant act of violence since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari came to office nearly two months ago, marked the first direct attempt to scare moderates away from political participation.

Insurgents bent on starting a civil war to overthrow Iraq’s US-backed government have maintained nearly eight weeks of relentless attacks, killing at least 1,230 people since April 28, when al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-dominated government.

Al-Issawi, thought to be 50, was shot dead with his son, according to Abdul-Sattar Jawad, editor-in-chief of al-Siyadah, a daily newspaper where the lawyer was a contributing editor.