100 die in Iraq militants' show of strength

Fri 25 Jun 2004

100 die in Iraq militants' show of strength

FOREIGN STAFF

IRAQI militants launched a wave of attacks across northern Iraq 
yesterday, killing 100 people in a show of strength that casts a shadow 
over next week’s handover of power.

Insurgents mounted apparently co-ordinated bombings and shootings 
against police and government buildings in Baquba, Fallujah, Ramadi, 
Mosul and Baghdad.

With an estimated 320 people wounded, the death toll was expected to rise.

Iraqi police, entrusted to take a larger role in security after 
Wednesday, appeared outgunned and unable to hold positions in most of 
the cities under fire. United States troops raced to offer support, 
using aircraft, tanks and helicopters to repel the guerrillas.

The military wing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group, the Tawhid and Jihad 
movement, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement on an 
Islamic website. The statement said members of the "martyrs’ battalion" 
had carried out a number of "blessed operations".

Most of the deaths were in Mosul, where the health ministry said 62 
people were killed and 220 injured in attacks that included a string of 
car bombs, which rocked the Iraqi Police Academy, two police stations 
and the al-Jumhuri hospital.

Security forces lost control of the Sheikh Fatih police station after a 
car bomb attack, but US forces recaptured the station after subduing 
insurgents firing from a nearby mosque.

One US soldier died in the city, where the governor imposed a 
dusk-to-dawn curfew and the television station urged people to stay home 
for the "general good".

The heaviest fighting raged in Baquba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, 
where two US soldiers were killed and seven were wounded.

US aircraft dropped three 500lb bombs against an insurgent position near 
Baquba’s football stadium.

Insurgents roamed the city with rocket launchers and automatic weapons, 
seized two police stations and destroyed the home of the police chief of 
surrounding Diyala province.

At the main hospital in Baquba, doctors struggled to deal with a steady 
stream of wounded. Doctors stood in pools of blood. Civilian cars, 
including pick-up trucks, raced to the door of the emergency ward with 
people suffering gunshot and shrapnel wounds.

"May God destroy America and all those who co-operate with it!" screamed 
one man in the corridor. Another man who drove up outside the hospital 
screamed "Oh God, Abbas is dead." He later carried in the body of a 
young man with a bullet hole in the back of his head.

The city, which has a mix of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, was almost 
deserted. US gunships flew low over the city, some swooping down on 
suspected rebel hideouts in palm groves. Some motorists flew white flags 
from their cars to try to ensure their safety. US tanks moved into the 
city centre by the afternoon.

No policemen could be seen on the streets, but targets attacked by the 
rebels in the early morning - including the governor’s office, police 
headquarters and the coalition’s local offices - were heavily guarded by 
Iraqi police.

In other attacks, a man dressed as an Iraqi policeman detonated a car 
bomb near a checkpoint manned by Iraqi and US soldiers in the southern 
Baghdad district of Dora, killing four Iraqi soldiers. Attackers also 
set off an explosion as a military convoy passed in Baghdad, injuring 
one soldier.

Also in Baghdad, insurgents attacked four Iraqi police stations using 
mortars, hand grenades and AK-47s. Police defended the stations with 
minimal assistance from coalition forces, a US statement said.

Fighting in Fallujah and Ramadi, in the Sunni Muslim heartland of 
central Iraq, killed at least nine people and wounded 27, the health 
ministry said.

In Fallujah, armed men ran through the streets and Iraqi police and 
insurgents appeared to be working together, witnesses said.

Iraq’s interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, vowed to crush the foreign 
Islamic militants and remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime, whom he 
blamed for attacks.

Mr Allawi tried to play down the assaults as the desperate acts of 
ragtag militants who knew their days were numbered.

"These are isolated incidents. We are going face them and we are going 
to defeat them and we are going to crush them," Mr Allawi said. "We have 
been expecting this escalation, and we are expecting more escalation in 
the days ahead."

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who had talks in London with 
Nechervan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan regional government, 
said: "We have long expected that there would be difficult times in the 
run-up to the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis.

"These attacks are targeted on those Iraqis who are working hard to 
build a better future for their country. They are aimed at depriving the 
Iraqi people of the peaceful and democratic future they deserve. They 
will not succeed."

• Shiite militiamen loyal to the radical Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr 
declared a unilateral ceasefire yesterday in the Baghdad slum of Sadr 
City, their last stronghold against US troops.


This article:

   http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=728532004

Iraq:

   http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=404

Websites:

   Al Jazeera (English)
   http://english.aljazeera.net/

   Iraq Today
   http://www.iraq-today.com/

   Electronic Iraq
   http://electroniciraq.net/news/

   Iraq Daily (World News Network)
   http://www.iraqdaily.com/

   Red Cross / Red Crescent
   http://www.ifrc.org/

   UN - Office of the Iraq Programme
   http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/

   Christian Aid report - The missing billions
   http://www.christianaid.org.uk/indepth/310iraqoil/index.htm

   The World Bank
   http://www.worldbank.org/
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