BAGHDAD, May 23: Forty people were killed in Iraq on Tuesday, including 16 in two bomb explosions. The deadliest single attack killed 11 people at a Shia mosque in Baghdad, where a bomb planted in a motorcycle went off outside as worshippers were leaving following late night prayers.
An Iraqi military commander said a spate of 600 attacks had killed nearly 100 people in the past week.
“We’ve noticed an increase in terrorist attacks in the last three days after the formation of the new government,” said Major General Abdel Aziz Mohammed, commander of the defence ministry’s operations room.
General Mohammed said 98 civilians had been killed and 280 wounded in 607 attacks in the week to Monday. Some 85 suspected insurgents were killed by coalition and Iraqi forces in the same period, he added.
A United Nations report said nearly 2,500 people been killed in March and April and 85,000 had fled their homes.
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad acknowledged that parts of Iraq were out of the control of government troops and their coalition allies.
“Parts of Anbar are under control of terrorists and insurgents,” he told CNN referring to an overwhelmingly Sunni province west of the capital which was one of the first strongholds of the insurgency.
In other incidents, a car bomb exploded at a large vegetable market in Baghdad’s Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City, killing five people.
In the main northern city of Mosul, a family of blacksmiths was targeted when gunmen drove up next to their car and opened fire, killing four people and wounding one, police said.
And the corpse of a 10-year-old boy, kidnapped Monday night from his home, was found with a bullet wound to the head and bearing torture marks, police said.
SECURITY POSTS: The killings underscored the urgency to fill three government security posts, and a Shia politician close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that the vacant slots of defence and interior minister would be filled within the next 48 hours.
Maliki’s cabinet, approved by parliament on Saturday, still lacks the two ministers and one security chief charged with reining in sectarian violence.
Parliament agreed to approve Maliki’s government after the premier promised to staff the posts within a week.
Four names are under consideration for the interior ministry. Among them are former national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, a former army general and an inspector general in the ministry.
Prominent politician Ahmed Chalabi has been dropped from the shortlist, and independent Shia politician Qassem Dawud is now being considered for the post of national security.
Four names have also been put forward for defence.
They include former parliament speaker Hajem al-Hassani and Thamer Sultan al-Tikriti, an army general who was imprisoned by Saddam.—AFP
