By Kim Gamel
The Associated Press, 05 June 2007
BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber struck a group of tribal chiefs who opposed al-Qaida, killing at least 18 in a market area near Fallujah. Tuesday's attack underscored the difficulties facing Sunni leaders in trying to wrest control of Anbar province from the terror network.
Much of the al-Buissa tribe has formed an alliance against al-Qaida in
Iraq, which has alienated more moderate Sunnis with its brutality and dependence on foreign fighters. The U.S. military has touted the alliance, the Anbar Salvation Council, as a success in its efforts to stabilize the country.
The bomb exploded in a pickup truck next to where the elders were trying to solve a tribal dispute in Amiriyah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, police said. The driver of the pickup had gained access to the market area by saying he needed to buy some watermelons, said Ahmed al-Issawi, 40, an owner of a food store there.
"We told him not to stay long in the market," al-Issawi said, adding the driver did stop to buy some watermelons. "Then, he drove very fast toward the sheiks and exploded the pickup. There was a hot storm that sent several stalls and bodies into the air."
Al-Issawi said he and other shop owners tried to extinguish some burning bodies.
At least 18 people were killed and 15 were wounded, according to U.S. Marine Maj. Jeff Pool, a military spokesman for the area.
As the mourners later buried the dead in the cemetery of the town on the outskirts of Fallujah, four mortar shells landed in the cemetery, police said. No casualties were reported in that attack.
An al-Buissa tribal chieftain, Abbas Mohammed, said the violence would not deter the local leaders from their fight against al-Qaida.
"We expected such attacks after we cleaned our area of al-Qaida members," Mohammed said. "Despite these attacks, we will go on in chasing al-Qaida elements."
Elsewhere in Anbar, Iraqi security officials said a suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint in the provincial capital of Ramadi, killing six policemen and wounding three others.
But Pool, the Marine spokesman, disputed the report, which initially came from an intelligence official with the Anbar Salvation Council who declined to be identified because of security concerns. The report had been confirmed by police Col. Tariq Mohammed Youssef, who also is linked to the alliance.
Officials also moved ahead with efforts to train Iraqi forces that they hope will eventually be able to take over security from U.S. troops.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Iraq's Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani attended the opening ceremony of the Anbar Iraqi Police Academy in nearby Fallujah, which was the site of fierce clashes between Americans and insurgents in 2004. The initial class of 550 recruits from Anbar will graduate Aug. 19, the military said.
Alert guards foiled a suicide attack in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday, gunning down a black-clad female bomber as she approached a group of police recruits and causing her explosives to detonate, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf.
"She didn't obey the guards' orders to stop and they shot her and she immediately blew up," Khalaf told The Associated Press.
The woman was dead at the scene. A police officer witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said three police recruits were slightly wounded.
Suicide bombings continue to claim scores of victims in Iraq's violence, principally aimed at Shiite targets and blamed on Sunni extremists in al-Qaida in Iraq. But female bombers remain relatively rare.
The number of execution-style killings usually blamed on Shiite militias also appears to be on the rise. Such killings had tapered after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his fighters to lay low during a security crackdown that began on Feb. 14.
In all, at least 90 Iraqis were killed or found dead Tuesday. They included 61 bullet-riddled bodies, more than half found in Baghdad and most showing signs of torture — the apparent victims of so-called sectarian death squads. A U.S. soldier also was killed by small-arms fire in southern Baghdad, the military said.
In other violence, gunmen set up an illegal checkpoint near the Shiite enclave of Khalis in volatile Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and kidnapped 12 male college students who were on their way home from Diyala University in Baqouba, police said.
The attack came two weeks after the university was reported to have received threats from al-Qaida in Iraq with fliers and graffiti on the walls saying the facility should be closed because it is run by "infidels" and the classes are mixed with young men and women.
More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday, warning that the figure will continue to rise.
The number of Iraqis who have fled the country as refugees has risen to 2.2 million, said Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. A further 2 million have been driven from their homes but remain within the country, increasingly in "impoverished shanty towns," she said in Geneva.
Meanwhile, Iraqi legislators led by followers of al-Sadr passed a resolution Tuesday requiring the government to seek parliamentary permission for asking the
United Nations to extend the mandate of U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
The U.N. mandate for foreign forces in Iraq has been extended for a year through Dec. 31 at Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's request, so the parliamentary action was not expected to have any immediate effect. But it reflected growing disenchantment with the U.S.-backed government as Iraq's fractured parties jockey for power amid calls for American forces to withdraw.
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said "things could get very much worse if we don't maintain an effective engagement here."
"Sometimes I think that in the U.S. we're looking at Iraq right now as though it were the last half of a three-reel movie," Crocker told NPR News. "I think for Iraqis, it's a five-reel movie and they are still in the first half of it. So I don't see an end game, as it were, in sight."
------------------------------------
Citation: Kim Gamel. "Bombing shows schism among Iraq's Sunnis," The Associated Press, 05 June 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070605/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
------------------------------------