Iraq Office Explosion Kills Two Men

Associated Press ^ | 01/23/04 | SAMIR N. YACOUB

[TexKat]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A bomb planted in a meeting room exploded after a gathering of the Iraqi Communist Party, killing two men in an apparent attack on supporters of the U.S.-backed government, officials said Friday.

The attack in Baghdad on Thursday appeared aimed at undermining the Communists, who have become the most organized political group in the country since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Baath party. The Communists have one representative on the U.S.-backed, 25-member Iraqi Governing Council.

The bombing came as U.S. forces arrested a father and son suspected of launching a mortar and rocket barrage that killed two American soldiers at a U.S. outpost.

The attacks were part of a spate of assaults that killed 11 people on Wednesday and Thursday in central Iraq, where Saddam loyalists are waging a guerrilla war.

The other victims included four Christian women who were slain Wednesday as they headed to jobs at a U.S. military base. The security chief of Spanish troops in Iraq was shot and critically wounded Thursday during a raid south of Baghdad.

The bomb, suspected to have been planted in a meeting hall of the Iraqi Communist Party's local office, blew up Thursday evening, an hour after a meeting of 50 party members, said Mohammed Khudeir, a party official.

He said three party members were still in the office, clearing up, when the bomb went off, killing two and injuring one.

"It's a cowardly and terrorist act that led to the killing of innocent people," said Hamid Majid Moussa, the chief of the Iraqi Communist Party and a member of the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council.

Since the fall of the Baathists, the Communists have moved quickly to organize, collecting dues from members and opening small offices nationwide. The party operated underground during Saddam's days, and openly in the northern Kurdish areas that were outside government control.

The Christian women also appeared to have been killed as part of a campaign to discourage Iraqis from cooperating with the occupation forces. They were traveling in a minibus to the U.S. military base at Habaniyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, where they worked in the base laundry.

Assailants in a speeding car fired at their vehicles, killing four of them and wounding five.

One of the slain women, Askhik Varojan, was on her way to the base to hand in her resignation because she was afraid of insurgents, relatives said.

"She went yesterday to tell them that she wouldn't go to work any more and to claim her salary," Varojan's sister, Eida Varojan, sobbed. Askhik had taken the job at Habaniyah three weeks ago to support her paralyzed husband and four children.

On Thursday, U.S. forces arrested a man and his son, suspected of killing the two soldiers in a rocket and mortar barrage on a forward military base near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division.

The soldiers' deaths raised to 505 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the U.S.-led coalition launched the Iraq war on March 20.

Two Iraqi policemen were killed Thursday and three others were wounded when gunmen fired on a police checkpoint between Fallujah and Ramadi, two other insurgency hotspots west of Baghdad.

Fallujah, Ramadi, Baqouba and Baghdad are part of the so-called Sunni Triangle, where most of the insurgent attacks against U.S.-led coalition troops have taken place since the invasion. Minority Sunnis controlled power in Saddam's regime.

Coalition officials hope such hostility will diminish after the United States and its allies transfer sovereignty to a new Iraqi leadership by July 1. Coalition officials will gradually shift security responsibility to the Iraqis.

On Friday, 104 Japanese troops arrived at a Kuwaiti air base as part of the country's contribution to the Iraq effort, the first deployment of Japanese troops to a conflict zone since World War II. They will assist in moving equipment to southern Iraq, where an advance team of Japanese troops is setting up a base in Samawah.

The U.S. blueprint for a new Iraqi government has been threatened by a dispute with the country's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani. He opposes the U.S. plan to select a new provisional legislature through 18 regional caucuses, demanding direct elections instead.

U.S. officials insist early elections are impossible due to the security situation, lack of voter rolls and the absence of an election law.

Al-Sistani's allies have said the ayatollah would back down if a U.N. team of experts certifies that early elections are impossible. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will announce next week whether he will send such a team, a spokesman said Friday.

[TexKat]

Yahya Khalid Ibrahim, center, is comforted by family members during the funeral of his brother Ibrahim Khalid Ibrahim in Fallujah, Iraq Friday Jan. 23, 2004. Gunmen firing from a van killed Ibrahim, an Iraqi policman, in an attack on a checkpoint between Fallujah and Ramadi on Thursday. One other Iraqi policemen was killed and three others wounded in the attack. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Iraqi children, supporting the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, march in the street in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City after prayers Friday Jan. 23, 2004. Sadr City is the home of more than 2 million Shiite Muslim, with strong support for Sadr who has been loudly outspoken against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The headbands and flags bear the name of Imam al-Mahidi, the 12th Imam. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

An Iraqi policeman looks over the damage to a patrol truck on a highway near Falluja, January 22, 2004. Police said guerillas in a passing car lobbed a grenade and opened fire with assault rifles at a checkpoint on a highway to the town of Ramadi. REUTERS/Ali Jasim

A journalist looks at his colleague climb out of the spider hole in which Saddam Hussein was hiding when he was captured by U.S. troops in last month near Tikrit, December 15, 2003. The hole could be filled in to prevent it becoming a 'shrine,' a U.S. military spokesman said on January 23, 2004. The U.S. 4th Infantry Division, which captured Saddam at a farm in central Iraq last month, has asked for permission to destroy the hole and the nearby mud hut which were his last refuges. 'In order to avoid making it a tourist attraction and/or a shrine, we believe the best course of action is to eliminate it,' 4th Infantry Division spokesman Master Sergeant Robert Cargie said. Cargie cautioned that no decision had been made by military commanders in Baghdad, nor by the Iraqi Governing Council. Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters Cargie cautioned that no decision had been made by military commanders in Baghdad, nor by the Iraqi Governing Council.

An Iraqi man stands in front of a Japanese armored vehicle, in Samawah, southern Iraq, Friday, Jan. 23, 2004. An advance team of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces arrived in Kuwait last week and on Monday moved to Samawah in Southern Iraq. (AP Photo/Samir Mizban)

[TexKat]

Ping

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Morning, Kat.

The attack in Baghdad on Thursday appeared aimed at undermining the Communists, who have become the most organized political group in the country since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

VLWC has been working their basic "organized framework" since pre-WWII...following the basic "organized framework" of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Communists, banned under Hussein, are now free to organize and speak thanks to the voluntary sacrifices made by honorable American men and women ~ the great liberators of the worlds' oppressed, citizens of the "evil military industrial machine" ~ while the Communist nations of the world defended Saddam Hussein ~ oppressor and human rights violator of the first order.

Guess it never occured to this AP reporter that some newly freed Iraqis may resent Communist tyrants in their midst when considering motives for this bombing, just as the neighborhood revenge killings by victims of Hussein the monster are largely unreported by our same misguided MS (free ~ thanks to our troops) press.

<*/rant*>

[JCB]

Jeez...how do the DU pukes cheer this one? The "resistance" killed one of their own!