Truck bombing at Baghdad police station kills 22

BAGHDAD- AFP
Twenty-two people were killed and 25 wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a truck full of explosives outside a police station in Baghdad. “The bodies of the victims, many of whom were policemen, were completely burnt by the blast,” an interior ministry official said.

Around 22 cars, 10 shops and a residential building were set ablaze in the massive explosion outside Al-Rashid police station in the Al-Mashtel neighbourhood in the southeast of the capital. “It appears that the bomber who was driving the truck wanted to enter the police station, but for some reasons the explosives exploded 20 metres (yards) before the police station,” the official said, adding that US and Iraqi security forces had now cordoned off the area.

The bombing, one of a number of deadly attacks against police, occurred as Sunni Arab leaders were considering ending a boycott of talks on a constitution to lay out Iraq‘s future following the ousting of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. With an August 15 deadline looming for parliament to vote on a draft constitution, Sunni Arab leaders said they would reconsider their boycott of the committee writing the basic law.

The boycott was called in protest at the murder by insurgents on Tuesday of two Sunni members of the committee. “Today we are holding meetings amongst ourselves to reach a joint decision on whether to resume our work in the committee,” Ayad Al-Sammarai, number two in the Sunni-based Islamic Party, told AFP.

“Circumstances forced us to suspend our participation, but this is a very delicate time and we must participate and give our opinion on the constitution,” he said. “We might rejoin the committee as early as tomorrow (Monday).” The leader of the Sunni Waqf, a religious endowment body, said the boycott was only meant to be a temporary measure to protest at the murders. “Sunni Arabs must have a say in drawing up the country’s constitution,” said Adnan Al-Dulaimi.

The government was responding positively to several of their demands, including one for better security for committee members, the officials said. Sunni Arabs account for a fifth of the country’s population, but are currently under-represented in parliament because much of the community boycotted the January general elections. The government recently increased Sunni representation on the constitutional drafting committee in a bid to broaden support for the vital document, whose adoption in a referendum set for October 15 is considered crucial to maintaining political momentum.

The government, dominated by Kurds and Shiites, also hopes increased Sunni Arab participation in the political process will undermine the community’s support for insurgents. Meanwhile, US and Iraqi authorities are to set up a joint task force to fix the criteria under which US troops will hand over responsibility for fighting insurgents to Iraqi forces. “The joint task force will establish criteria and conditions that will help determine when Iraqi Security Forces … will be capable of assuming full responsibility to secure Iraq,” US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in a statement.

“This task force will establish no timeline; but, instead, identify conditions sanctioned by the leadership of the Iraqi government and the multi-national coalition,” Khalilzad said.

US President George W. Bush has refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of the 138,000 US forces in Iraq, but has said that US forces would stand down as Iraqi forces gradually take over. Last week, US officials in Washington acknowledged that only a small number of the 171,500 Iraqi soldiers and police so far recruited are currently able to fight insurgents alone. In other incidents of violence, at least five people were killed across Iraq on Sunday, while a US marine was killed by a roadside bomb near the Jordanian border on Saturday.

The marine’s death brings the total number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 1,766, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures. An Iraq lieutenant colonel in charge of a police station in Baghdad was gunned down on his way to work and another policeman killed by mortar fire, police said. Another police lieutenant colonel was also killed on his way to work in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk.

In another incident a young girl was killed and six people were wounded when a mini-bus they were travelling in hit a roadside bomb in Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, while six policemen were wounded in clashes in the capital. And a provincial council member from Salaheddin was shot dead as he was repairing his car on a roadside north of Baghdad.