Iraqi president prepares to visit Iran after curfew lifted

A curfew that had banned vehicles from Baghdad’s streets and closed its international airport to all civilian flights for three days was lifted today, clearing the way for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to travel to Iran for an official visit.

Talabani had been scheduled to visit neighbouring Iran on Saturday, but he had to postpone his trip because of the security clampdown imposed across Baghdad after Sunni-Arab insurgents killed more than 200 people in the Shiite slum of Sadr City on Thursday in the deadliest attack by militants since the war began in March 2003.

Talabani’s visit will be closely watched to see if Iran’s mostly Shiite government tries to do more to help Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government stem a surge in sectarian violence in Iraq.

Talabani is a member of Iraq’s Kurdish minority, but he had close ties with Iranian officials before Saddam Hussein was driven out by the US-led invasion in 2003.

Hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran is “ready to help” the United States calm Iraq’s fighting, but the Bush administration has repeatedly accused Tehran of arming and providing logistical assistance to al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents and Shiite militias.

As traffic began to return to the streets of Baghdad on Monday, scattered violence continued in a capital where thousands of people have fled their mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhoods to escape widespread sectarian fighting.

In the southern district of Dora, one of the city’s most violent areas, armed men in two cars attacked a police patrol at 8.30am, wounding six policemen, said police 1st Lt. Abdul Razzaq. Half an hour later, other gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint, wounding four soldiers, he said.

In western Baghdad, police found the bodies of two Iraqis who had been kidnapped, blindfolded and shot, said police 1st Lt. Miathem Abdel-Razaq. Each week, the mutilated bodies of scores of Shiites and Sunnis are found across Iraq, many of them the victims of revenge killings.

The US command also said three Army soldiers were killed and two wounded during combat operations in Baghdad yesterday, the day that Iraq’s government began to lift the curfew by allowing Iraqis to leave their homes on foot to shop at their local fruit and vegetable markets.

In Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province north of Baghdad, police said the area was mostly quiet this morning, after two days of fierce fighting.

Yesterday, at least 17 insurgents were killed and 15 detained, police said. Twenty civilians were kidnapped and three bodies found in the province. The mayor of a municipality also narrowly escaped an assassination attempt that killed one of his guards and wounded three.

During Saturday’s fighting in Baqouba, police killed at least 36 insurgents and wounded dozens after scores of militants armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked government buildings in the city centre, police said. The fighting raged for hours in the city, about 35 miles north-east of Baghdad.

Also on Saturday, a US soldier was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in Diyala province, the military said.

In Baghdad yesterday, Talabani, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, and Sunni Parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani called for an end to Iraq’s sectarian conflict and vowed to track down those responsible for the Sadr City attack.

Their statement on national TV came as al-Maliki prepares for a summit meeting in neighbouring Jordan with President George Bush on Wednesday and Thursday.

Now that Bush’s Republican Party have lost control of the US Congress, many Americans are calling for a phased withdrawal of America’s tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq.