Group claims responsibility for Iraq car bombing

Sunni Muslims protested at the killing of a tribal leader today while a statement posted on the internet said a bombing that killed 11 people was in retaliation for the assassination of the respected sheikh.

More than 200 members of the Batta tribe gathered at a mosque in northwestern Baghdad holding banners and chanting slogans to demand the resignation of the minister of defence for the slaying of Khadim Sarhid al-Hemaiyem on Wednesday.

One of the slain man’s brothers a group of gunmen with Iraqi army uniforms and vehicles broke into al-Hemaiyem’s home and killed him, three of his sons and his son-in-law. A spokesman for the interior ministry denied that government forces were involved in the attack.

Another one of al-Hemaiyem’s sons was killed by men in uniform last month, family members said.

“We want the Arab League and the Sunni scholars to investigate,” Abdullah Jawad Khadim al Battawi, a relative said.

A statement from the little-known Partisans of the Sunni claimed responsibility for a bombing yesterday in Hillah, a mostly Shiite Muslim city 60 miles south of Baghdad. Eleven Iraqis were killed and 17 injured when a car bomb exploded near a crowded soft drink stand.

“We have warned the (Shiites) to stop assassinations and detentions and torture,” the statement posted today said. “You should know, your blood is no more dear than ours. You kill our men, we kill yours. You kill our sheikhs, we kill yours. You started this war.”

A prosecutor in the Saddam Hussein trial said today that a key witness in the case has died of cancer, but his testimony has already been recorded on audio and video tape for presentation in the trial which is scheduled to begin next week.

Wadah Ismael Al-Sheik died on October 27, four days after talking to court officials, said Jafaar al-Mousawi, the main prosecutor. He said the testimony at a US detention centre was “on the side of the victims”.

Al-Sheik, was a senior Iraqi intelligence officer at the time of the Dujail massacre in 1982 that Saddam and seven other co-defendants are charged with. The trial is set to reopen on Monday.

If convicted, Saddam and the others could face the death penalty for their role in the 1982 killing of nearly 150 people from the mainly Shiite town of Dujail north of Baghdad after a failed attempt on Saddam’s life.