Parliament extends Iraq's state of emergency

Beset by rampant sectarian violence, Iraq’s parliament today voted to extend the country’s state of emergency for 30 more days, and suspected Sunni-Arab insurgents set off bombs in three different areas of the country that killed eight Iraqis and wounded 40.

Meanwhile, US forces investigating the crash of a single-seat Air Force jet in Iraq said that insurgents reached the site before American forces could and the pilot remains missing.

Videotape pictures appear to show the wreckage of the F-16CG jet in the farm field where it crashed yesterday and the remains of a US serviceman with a tangled parachute nearby.

Al-Jazeera satellite television showed similar pictures on Monday, but declined to include the scenes of the dead pilot, saying they were too graphic to air.

In Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone on the banks of the Tigris River, parliament voted unanimously to extend the emergency measures during a legislative session shown live on state-run Iraqiyah TV.

The state of emergency has been renewed every month since it was first authorised in November 2004.

It allows for a night-time curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations. The measures are implemented in all areas of the country apart from the autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

Attacks by suspected Sunni-Arab insurgents occurred in Baghdad and in northern Iraq on Tuesday.

Two car bombs exploded near al-Yamouk hospital’s morgue in the capital, killing three civilians and one policeman and wounding 19 civilians, a police officer said on condition of anonymity to protect his security in a country where insurgents kill many of the Iraqi security forces working with the US-led coalition.

In Diyala province north of the capital, where heavy fighting between police and Sunni insurgents has raged for several days, a roadside bomb exploded in the town of Baladrooz, killing three civilians and wounding four, a police officer said.

North of Diyala, an Iraqi governor survived an assassination attempt when a suicide bomber blew himself up near the official’s convoy. The attacker - wearing a belt of explosives hidden beneath his clothing – approached the convoy at 9.35am as it was driving slowly through the center of Kirkuk near the city’s main public hospital, said police Brig. Sarhat Qadir.

The man tried to enter the governor’s car, but when the door was locked he blew himself up, Qadir said.

Gov Abdul Rahman Mustafa and his bodyguards were not harmed, but the powerful blast hit civilians standing nearby, killing one of them and wounding 17, the officer said.

Kirkuk’s population is a mix of Kurds, Arabs and ethnic Turkmen. Hundreds have been killed in sectarian and ethnic fighting in the past three years. The city is 180 miles north of Baghdad.

The US Air Force crashed about 20 miles north-west of Baghdad at about 1.35pm yesterday while supporting extensive ground combat by coalition forces in Anbar province, the area of Iraq where many of the country’s Sunni-Arab insurgent groups operate, the Air Combat Command said in a statement today.

Fighter jets flying overhead when the crash occurred “confirmed that insurgents were in the vicinity of the crash site immediately following the crash,” the command said. When U.S. soldiers reached the area, “The pilot was not found at the crash site and his status cannot be confirmed at this time.”

DNA samples were taken from the scene and were being tested, it said.

The F-16 was deployed to the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Balad Air Base in Iraq.

Capt Nathan Broshear, an Air Force spokesman, said the cause of the crash is being investigated.

But Maj Gen William Caldwell, a US military spokesman, told a news conference in Baghdad that there is no indication the plane was shot down.