March 10, 2005
By Charles Abbott
News My Way
Photo: Kadim Abeis wails in grief as he clutches the shoe of his dead brother, after gunmen in two cars opened fire on a vehicle carrying his brother Col. Ahmed Abeis, the head of a police station in central Baghdad, killing him and two of his guards in the Saidiyah neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, March 10, 2005. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) - A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque during a funeral Thursday in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 30 people, witnesses and hospital officials said, hours after gunmen killed two district police chiefs in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, Iraq's main Shiite party and a Kurdish bloc have reached a deal that sets the stage for a new government to be formed when the National Assembly convenes next week, officials from both sides said Thursday.
The deal between the Shiites and the Kurds calls for the government to begin discussion on the return of about 100,000 Kurds to the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk and talks about redrawing existing Kurdish regions to include the city in Iraq's new constitution.
In Mosul, U.S. troops cordoned off the area in the northeastern Tameem neighborhood near the mosque. Civilian vehicles helped ambulance crews in ferrying casualties to hospitals.
"We received 30 dead and 25 injured, and the numbers are increasing," said Dr. Saher Maher, at a hospital in the city.
"As we were inside the mosque, we saw a ball of fire and heard a huge explosion," said Tahir Abdullah Sultan, 45. "After that blood and pieces of flesh were scattered around the place," he added.
The U.S. military that controls the area could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mosul has been a hotbed of insurgent activity and the scene of many bombings, drive-by shootings and assassinations against the country's security services, Shiite majority and people thought to be working with U.S.-led forces.
In the Baghdad attacks, assailants in two cars opened fire on a pickup truck carrying Col. Ahmed Abeis, the head of Salihiyah police in western Baghdad, killing him, his driver and a guard, police Col. Khazim Abbas said.
The white truck could be seen on the side of a road in Baghdad's Saidiyah neighborhood, its windows shattered and bullet-ridden. Weeping, a brother of Abeis picked up an empty shoe from the back of the blood-smeared vehicle.
In an Internet statement, a group claiming to be Al-Qaida in Iraq took responsibility for an attack in the same area on "an intelligence officer who used to investigate the Mujahedeen and hurt them." The authenticity of the statement could not be verified.
In a separate attack, gunmen also killed the chief of Jisr Diyala in southeast Baghdad, Col. Ayad Abdul-Razaq, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
Iraqi police and army troops are frequently targeted by insurgents who see them as collaborators with U.S. forces.
In the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed an accountant working for KurdSat TV, Brig. Saraht Qadir said. The television station belongs to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Kurdish parties.
The shootings came after authorities announced Wednesday they'd found 41 bodies at two sites in Iraq. Officials said some of the badly decomposed corpses are Iraqi soldiers who were kidnapped and slain by insurgents. Others were civilians, including women and children who may have been killed because their families were seen as collaborators.
Also Wednesday, a suicide bomber in a garbage truck loaded with explosives and at least one gunman shot their way into a parking lot in a daring attempt at dawn to blow up a hotel used by Western contractors in Baghdad. At least four people, including the attackers and a guard, were killed.
The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that 30 American contractors were among 40 people injured in the massive blast. No Americans were killed. In an Internet statement, al-Qaida in Iraq purportedly claimed responsibility for the attack on the Sadeer hotel, calling it the "hotel of the Jews."
Iraq's interim planning minister, Mahdi al-Hafidh, escaped death on Wednesday after gunmen opened fire on his convoy in the capital. Two of his bodyguards were killed and two others were wounded, he said.
"I'm fine, just sorry about the death of the guards, who were still young," he told state-run Al-Iraqiya TV. "It is a part of the crisis that Iraq is living, but we will keep going for the sake of Iraq, to get rid of terrorism and build a democratic country."
Two other car bombings were also reported. One targeted an American checkpoint outside a base in Habaniyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad. Another car bomb exploded near U.S. troops close to Abu Ghraib, just west of the capital.
No other details were available and the U.S. military could not be reached for comment.
Elsewhere, guerrillas struck a police patrol with a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra, killing two policeman and wounding three, Lt. Col. Karim Al-Zaydi said.
In northern Kirkuk, a woman identified as Nawal Mohammed, who worked with U.S. forces, was killed in a drive-by shooting, police Gen. Turhan Youssef said.
Another three unidentified men were gunned down in central Baghdad and another was killed when gunmen opened fire on a bus, police and defense ministry officials said.
In northern Mosul, two police officers were killed and two others were injured in clashes with insurgents, officials said.
In the attack against the Sadeer hotel, al-Qaida in Iraq's "military wing" posted another Internet statement attributed to its leader, Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
It said it carried out extensive surveillance of the hotel and "we have fulfilled our vow to take down the Jews and Christians." In an alleged response on the same site, someone purporting to be al-Zarqawi replied that "you have relieved us by killing the enemy of God. God bless you."
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Associated Press writers Todd Pitman, Rawya Rageh and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
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