Abu Ghraib detainees released

A suicide car bomber killed at least 10 Iraqis in an attack near government buildings in Baghdad today.

The blast came as US forces and the Iraqi government tried to reach out to moderates in Iraq, especially in the Sunni minority, by beginning to release 1,000 detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in honour of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week.

The first 500 prisoners were driven out of the prison on Iraqi public buses on the outskirts of Baghdad. The rest will be freed later this week, the US military said.

Arab governments often pardon non-violent offenders during Ramadan, but the move also appeared to be part of the Iraqi government’s effort to persuade citizens to vote in the October 15 national referendum on Iraq’s draft constitution, especially the Sunni minority.

Approval of the draft constitution would be an important step in Iraq’s democratic transformation. But many Sunni leaders and insurgents are calling for a boycott or a “no” vote in the referendum, saying the draft document would leave Iraq’s minority Sunnis with far less power than the country’s Kurds and majority Shiites.

If two-thirds of any three provinces vote “no” in the referendum, the constitution would have to be rewritten and Iraq’s parliament dissolved and replaced in another election.

The suicide car bomb targeted a police checkpoint guarding Iraq’s oil ministry, irrigation ministry and national Police Academy, and a private bus carrying 24 oil ministry employees and their driver, said police Capt. Nabil Abdel Qadir.

Seven policemen died and three people aboard the bus, Qadir said. Thirty-six Iraqis were wounded, 14 of them policemen and 22 of them bus passengers, he said.

Government workers often are searched at the checkpoint before they are allowed to walk to their offices about 100 yards away.

Oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum said: “The insurgents are targeting Iraqi government employees and worshippers in mosques. These savage acts won’t undermine the forthcoming people’s referendum on the new Iraqi constitution.”

Yesterday, at least 24 Iraqis were killed during a day of stepped-up violence.

Gunmen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ambushed an Iraqi patrol in an eastern Baghdad slum, and nearby US forces joined the 90-minute gun battle, killing as many as eight of the attackers in the first significant violence in the neighbourhood in nearly a year.