Vengeful Insurgents Ramp Up Iraq Attacks
End The War
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents struck back with a vengeance following a
post-election lull, waylaying a minibus carrying new Iraqi army
recruits, firing on Iraqis heading for work at a U.S. base and gunning
down an Iraqi soldier in the capital, officials said Thursday. Two U.S.
Marines were killed in action.
At least 20 people, including the Marines, died in
insurgent-related incidents starting Wednesday night, according to U.S.
and Iraqi reports. Insurgents had eased up on attacks following
Sunday's elections, when American and Iraqi forces imposed sweeping
security measures to protect the voters.
In the deadliest incident, insurgents stopped the minibus south of
Kirkuk, ordered army recruits off the vehicle and gunned down 12 of
them, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin. The rebels allowed two of the
soldiers to go free and ordered them to warn others against joining
Iraq (news - web sites)'s U.S.-backed security forces, he said.
The assailants identified themselves as members of Takfir wa Hijra,
an Islamic group that emerged in the 1960s in Egypt, rejecting society
as corrupt and seeking to establish a utopian Islamic community.
Elsewhere, gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying Iraqi contractors
Thursday to jobs at a U.S. military base in Baqouba north of the
capital, killing two people, officials said. Two civilians were killed
and six injured Wednesday night when insurgents fired mortar shells at
a U.S. base in Tal Afar, 30 miles west of Mosul.
A car bomb exploded at a house used by U.S. military snipers in
Qaim, near the Syrian border, witnesses said. Other U.S. troops
responding to the scene opened fire, hitting some civilians, the
witnesses said. A U.S. military spokesman had no immediate information.
In the south, gunmen overran a police station in the city of
Samawah, killing one Iraqi policeman and injuring two others Wednesday
night, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported. Japanese troops are based
outside Samawah.
An Iraqi soldier was killed Thursday as assailants opened fire as
he was leaving his home in Baghdad, officials said. The governor of
Anbar province, a rebel stronghold west of the capital, escaped
assassination Thursday when a roadside bomb exploded near his car in
Ramadi.
Gov. Qaoud al-Namrawi was not harmed, but a woman was injured when
his guards opened fire.
Both Marines were killed in clashes Wednesday in Anbar province,
which includes such restive cities and towns as Ramadi, Fallujah and
Qaim.
The upsurge in violence occurred shortly after interim Prime
Minister Ayad Allawi declared that the success of Iraq's elections had
dealt a major blow to the insurgency and predicted victory over the
rebels within months.
Allawi cited a drop in violence immediately after Sunday's
balloting, although he said it was too early to tell if a trend had
begun.
"They might be reorganizing themselves and changing their plans,"
Allawi told Iraqi television. "The coming days and weeks will show
whether this trend will continue ... But the final outcome will be
failure. They will continue for months but this (insurgency) will end."
Iraqis turned out in large numbers to vote for a 275-seat National
Assembly, provincial councils and a regional parliament for the
autonomous Kurdish north. But in large areas of the country where the
Sunni Arab-led insurgency still roils, few went to the polls, either
because of objections to the holding elections under foreign occupation
or for fear of retribution.
Because many Sunni's stayed away from the polls, influential Sunni
clerics - including many who had called for a boycott - are now
challenging the legitimacy of the balloting and the government that
will emerge from it.
Fears have emerged that the election outcome could leave the
country's Sunni Arab minority further alienated and continue to fuel
the Sunni-led insurgency.
Reconciling the Sunni Arab minority, which accounts for 20 percent
of Iraq's 26 million people, will be a key challenge for the new
parliament, which is expected to be dominated by Shiite Muslim
political factions.
Allawi, a secular Shiite, and his major Shiite Muslim election
rivals have made efforts to reach out to the Sunnis, promising them a
major role in drafting the new constitution even though many Sunnis
shunned the ballot. Drafting a permanent charter is one of the central
tasks of the new parliament.
"Definitely the Sunni Muslims will take part in the government and
will have a role in the drafting of constitution," Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim,
head of the main Shiite political faction, told The Associated Press in
an interview Wednesday.
A group of leading Sunni clerics on Wednesday issued their first
statement since the election, calling the vote illegitimate and saying
they would not participate in the writing a constitution.
The Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars, which had called
for an election boycott, said the new government would lack legitimacy
because many Sunnis stayed home on election day.
"We cannot participate in the drafting of a constitution written
under military occupation," said association spokesman, Mohammed Bashar
al-Feidhi.
Allawi said he would meet Thursday with representatives of groups
that did not take part in the elections but names of the participants
were not released.