At Least 9 Dead in Attacks in Iraq
By SAM DAGHER and MOHAMMED AL-OBAIDI
BAGHDAD — A wave of violence, including an assassination attempt against a deputy oil minister, swept through Baghdad and neighboring Diyala Province on Monday as Parliament passed a bill that would grant the country’s embattled minorities fewer guaranteed seats in upcoming elections.
The prospects of the enactment of the bill, which must still be approved by Iraq’s executive council, is unclear. In the most lethal attack of the day, six people were killed and 20 wounded when two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Interior’s criminal investigations unit in Baghdad’s central Karada district, according to a source at the ministry who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The deadliest of the bombs was planted in front of the protective concrete wall ringing the government building. The other was about 70 yards away. Two badly burned bodies were stretched on the street shortly after the explosions.
“I cannot believe what happened,” said a bewildered policeman at the scene, who said he had worked for the directorate for 35 years. “Who can plant a bomb in this fortified area in the presence of police patrols?”
The assassination attempt on the deputy oil minister came about 30 minutes before the Karada blasts. The official, Saheb Salman Qutub, was wounded along with his driver when a bomb planted in his car exploded, according to a ministry spokesman, Asem Jihad.
The attack happened as Mr. Qutub was getting into the car at his home in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Ataifiya to go to work, said Mr. Jihad.
The attack happened on a day a Japanese delegation visited the ministry to discuss investments in Iraq’s lucrative oil and gas sectors.
In other violence Monday, a huge car bomb exploded in a parking lot next to the headquarters of the local government in Baquba in Diyala Province, killing at least three and wounding 13, eight of them policemen, according to security and provincial officials.
The blast destroyed 22 vehicles and badly damaged several government buildings located nearby.
Ibrahim Bajlan, who heads the Diyala provincial council, said that the attack was proof that the situation in the province remained “fragile” and that the government’s lauded recent security operation in Diyala had “only accomplished a fraction of its goals.”
The attacks in Baghdad and Baquba came one day after American and Iraqi military officials said that overall levels of violence across the country were at their lowest since May 2004.
In a move that could stoke further tensions between Iraq’s fractious ethnic and sectarian groups, Parliament voted Monday in favor of a bill that would guarantee minorities significantly fewer seats on provincial councils than had been recommended by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq.
The bill would give Christians a single seat on councils in Baghdad, Basra and Nineveh instead of the three seats proposed by the United Nations mission in each of Baghdad and Nineveh.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority who, like Christians, have been reeling from attacks and displacement since the start of the war in 2003, were given one seat in Nineveh instead of the three proposed.
The new bill is supposed to be a compromise following the controversy that erupted in late September when Parliament had passed a new provincial election law but deleted an article that had provided 13 seats in six provinces for Iraqi Christians, Yazidis and other minorities. The new bill grants a total of six seats. The United Nations mission had proposed a total of 12.
Younadim Kanna, one of two Christians in Parliament, called Monday’s vote “a great insult.”
“There is no desire to respect minorities as the indigenous people of this country,” said Mr. Kanna. “This quota is simply a face saving mechanism by the ruling parties.”
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 3 November 2008 19:12 (sixteen years ago)
two weeks pass...