|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
April 13th,
2007 - Insurgent Group Says It Bombed Iraqi Parliament |
|
Insurgent
Group Says It Bombed Iraqi Parliament By Edward Wong and Christine Hauser New York Times April 13, 2007 Baghdad, April 13 - An
Islamic insurgency group that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed
responsibility today for a suicide bomb attack on the Parliament building
Thursday that killed one person and wounded 22. The group, the Islamic State
of Iraq, issued a statement on the Internet a day after the attack because it
said it wanted to allow its members to withdraw from the area. The SITE
Institute, which tracks militant postings, said the claim is authentic. “God has rejoiced you Sunnis
after seeing those monkey M.P.’s crying and shouting because of the horrible
scene they witnessed,” the group said in the statement. “A heroic knight of
the Islamic State of Iraq, may God bless its men, went inside the crowd of
the infidels of the so-called Parliament on Thursday, April 12, 2007. God has
destroyed the crowds of defectors and infidels.” The Islamic State of Iraq,
an umbrella insurgency group, said that more attacks were being planned. Iraqi lawmakers held a
special session today to denounce the suicide attack, deep inside the heavily
fortified International Zone. Today, the American military
said in a statement that it had consulted with the government of Iraq to
amend the casualty count from the attack, in which a bomber detonated
explosives inside the building just a few feet from the main chamber. The
initial count was eight killed and 23 wounded. The American military
statement said that the initial reports of the casualty toll were based on
information from eyewitnesses and emergency responders as people were being
evacuated in different directions after the blast. At a time when Iraqis are
increasingly questioning the government’s ability to protect them, the
bombing raised the troubling possibility that it could not even fully protect
itself, although the zone is at the wellspring of American and Iraqi military
power in the city. In today’s session, held on
a day that the parliament is usually not in session, lawmakers placed flowers
on the empty seat of their colleague who was killed in the attack, Muhammad
Awad, a Sunni legislator. The bomber struck a half
hour after the day’s session had closed Thursday, in a cafe area where
lawmakers were lingering. “This is a cowardly act,”
said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Ahmad Saleh on Thursday, “and this proves
that terrorism is indiscriminate. Sunnis, Shia, Kurds have been injured and
maimed and killed in this attack. This should be a reminder that all Iraqis
are targeted.” He visited the wounded at Ibn Sina Hospital, which is run by
the United States military. Mr. Saleh and Mowaffak
al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, who was also visiting the wounded,
called the attack a major security breach. Regulations in the zone require
visitors to undergo several screenings by Iraqi forces, foreign contractors
and American soldiers. The image of the
International Zone as an impregnable fortress had been on the wane. Regular
rocket and mortar attacks on the United States Embassy compound in recent
weeks have killed a civilian and a soldier, and wounded several others. And
senior military officials said two suicide vests were found in a garbage bin
about two weeks ago. Accordingly, news of the
attack on Thursday came less as a shock than as further evidence of the
government’s impotence, even in the midst of a major security push in the
city. But Baghdad residents had
already been horrified by news of the bombing of the Sarafiya bridge, a
demoralizing attack Thursday that killed six people and stole one of the few
remaining reminders of better days in the capital. The bomber drove a tanker
truck loaded with explosives onto the bridge at 7 a.m. and brought it to a
halt midway, according to American military officials and witnesses. The
driver examined the truck’s underside and then disappeared. With the truck
blocking traffic, motorists stopped a police patrol crossing the bridge and
asked them to do something about it. Immediately suspicious, the
police moved cars and people off the bridge and radioed to the patrols on the
opposite side to stop people from starting across. One witness, a tractor
driver, described a policeman opening the passenger door of the truck, seeing
a mass of wires and batteries, and running away. Ten minutes later the bomb
exploded, so powerfully that it killed six people some distance away, sent
several cars careening into the river and destroyed 65 percent to 75 percent
of the steel structure. Politicians, immediately sensitive to the impact of
the bombing, swiftly condemned it, eulogized the structure and promised to
rebuild it. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, who was traveling in South Korea, released a statement describing the
bridge as “one of the oldest and loveliest city bridges.” In the Parliament attack,
several lawmakers expressed bitterness at both the government and the
Americans for failing to protect them and said the attack must have been
carried out by someone who had security clearance and was able to avoid the
multiple searches. “This is a great blow to the
government, which is always talking about security and how it is improving
with the Americans, but it’s a great violation of their security plan,” Ali
al-Mayali, an injured legislator from the bloc allied with the militant
Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, said as he sat outside the hospital, holding
gauze to his head to stanch bleeding from a shrapnel wound. “This is the International
Zone, protected by the Americans,” Mr. Mayali said. “It’s a big violation
that they reached the center of decision-making.” Another Sadr bloc
legislator, Asma al-Musawi, who hurried to the hospital to find wounded
colleagues, expressed similar dismay. But she said the attack was also a
reminder to members of Parliament what life was like for their constituents,
who lived with far less protection. “We must expect this,” Ms.
Musawi said. “It is worse outside in Baghdad, so the violence will
definitely, eventually reach into the International Zone. If you are unable
to protect your people, eventually you will be unable to protect yourself. “But this is an alarm for
the government, for security inside the International Zone, for the coalition
forces, for the people leading Iraq.” Maj. Gen. William Caldwell
IV, the chief American military spokesman in Iraq, condemned the bombing,
saying: “We in the multinational force Iraq condemn these attacks. These are
clearly attacks on Iraqi institutions. We try to build hope and they are
trying to instill fear. But we remain committed to the Iraqi people.” The Parliament building has
its own security arrangements, not managed by either the American military or
by the Interior Ministry of Police or Ministry of Defense, said Mr. Rubaie,
the security adviser to Prime Minister Maliki. Several lawmakers said that
their guards were often able to bully their way through checkpoints without
being searched and that some carried high-level badges that made them and
their vehicles exempt from being examined when the entered the zone. “No one can bring bombs into
this zone or this building except the lawmakers and their guards, and some of
the lawmakers’ convoys are not searched,” said Wail Abdul Latif, a legislator
from the secular Iraqiya bloc led by the former interim prime minister, Ayad
Allawi. “Some of the lawmakers’ guards make trouble at the checkpoints, some
of them refuse to be searched. They are not very professional.” He added that he wanted the
American military to take over securing the Parliament, as it had done before
the new government was put in place. Reporting was contributed by
Alissa J. Rubin, Ahmad Fadam, Qais Mizher, and Khalid al-Ansary. Copyright 2007 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/world/middleeast/13cnd-iraq.html |