IRAQ: The anniversary of Saddam Hussein's capture was marked with a day of violence when a suicide car-bomber struck in Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 13 people.
The bomber drove into a checkpoint in Harthiya, western Baghdad, at one of several entrances to the Green Zone, the fortified complex housing the US and British embassies and Iraqi government offices. A number of cars were wrecked.
Fifteen other people were hurt, according to Mohammed Abdel Satar, a doctor at Yarmouk hospital. No US troops were injured.
A militant group led by the Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility. "On this blessed day a lion from the Martyrs' Brigade has gone out to strike at a gathering of apostates and Americans in the green zone," it said in an Internet statement.
A number of other explosions shook the capital yesterday morning. In one incident, a suicide car-bomber attacked a US military convoy in northern Baghdad, injuring three American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian, the US military reported. Two Humvee vehicles were "severely damaged", the military said.
Seven Marines were killed on Sunday in al-Anbar province, the large desert area west of the capital which includes the troubled towns of Falluja and Ramadi.
The unusually high death toll for a single day again underlines the continued strength of the insurgency despite US military operations.
A year ago, the American and British occupation authorities were celebrating the capture of Saddam Hussein, who was hauled out from a foxhole at a farmhouse on the banks of the Tigris River.
Diplomats and military chiefs at the time hailed the capture as a tipping point which would dramatically weaken the insurgency. Instead, the guerrillas grew in strength and took on a more militant Islamic character. Almost 1,300 US troops have died since the invasion.
Many Iraqis blame the earliest decisions of the US occupation. Ghazi al-Yawar, the US-appointed Iraqi president, became the latest to join the critics when he attacked the decision to dismantle the interior and defence ministries. "Definitely, dissolving the ministry of defence and the ministry of the interior was a big mistake at that time," Mr al-Yawar, a senior Sunni tribal figure, said in a BBC interview.
He maintained that it would have been better to reform the Iraqi army and police and then weed out criminals and troublemakers, rather than put hundreds of thousands out of work.
He still sounded optimistic about the future and said that US forces could withdraw within months, not years. "As soon as we have efficient security forces that we can depend on, we can see the beginning of the withdrawal of forces from our friends and partners, and I think it doesn't take years, it will take months."
However, in a second interview, this time with the Arabic Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, he said that the persistent violence could bring another "strongman" into power. "This could in the long-term create an environment in which an 'Iraqi Hitler' could emerge, like the one created by the defeat of Germany and the humiliation of Germans in the first World War" he said.
A brief hunger strike by at least eight senior figures from Saddam's regime, now held in a US jail in Baghdad, petered out yesterday after two days. - (Guardian Service)