New spy agency formed in Iraq: Blast claims 10 more lives
BAGHDAD, July 15: Iraq's interim prime minister announced the formation of a new spy agency to tackle insurgents on Thursday, hours after a car bomb killed 10 people
including several policemen and two children northwest of Baghdad.
Mr Iyad Allawi said he was creating the General Security Directorate, a domestic intelligence agency, which he hoped would infiltrate and expose those behind an insurgency that has raged since US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein last year.
"We are determined to bring down all the hurdles that stand in the way of our democracy," Mr Allawi told a news conference, a day after a suicide car bomb in Baghdad killed 11 people and the the governor of the northern city of Mosul was assassinated.
"Terrorism will be terminated, God willing." In the town of Haditha, officials said 10 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded near the main police station. The blast damaged a municipal building and a bank in the town, 200 km northwest of Baghdad.
"Some of the dead are police, some work in the Haditha bank, while two are children," Najim al-Din, a doctor at a Haditha hospital, told Reuters. Mr Allawi said security was improving despite fresh attacks.
The prime minister did not give specific details on what functions the new security body would carry out or how it would operate with Iraq's fledgling police force, but he said it would function under the judicial system.
AMNESTY: For many Iraqis a new spy agency may have overtones of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's feared domestic intelligence agency which for decades kept tight tabs on the nation, but Mr Allawi said it was for the good of the country.
Many had expected Allawi to announce an amnesty to insurgents who lay down their arms. He said the issue was being discussed, but that any offer would only last a short time.
Allawi said the death penalty - used frequently under Saddam - was also under consideration. In central Baghdad, thousands of Iraqis marched through the streets demanding the execution of Saddam and denouncing Islamist militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "Let every fool listen, Saddam has to be executed," shouted the crowd.
In Kirkuk, a mother and her three children were killed when a rocket landed on their house late on Wednesday as they slept on the roof to escape the summer heat, police said.
KILLED: In Kirkuk, the head of security at Iraq's foreign ministry was killed and two other officials wounded when gunmen attacked their convoy travelling north on the road from Baghdad to Kirkuk, a senior Kurdish official said here. The ambush occurred at about 3:30pm (0430 PST) close to the town of Al-Audhaim. -Agencies
