IRAQ: A senior Iraqi defence ministry official has become the latest government figure to be killed in Baghdad as a suicide truck bomb claimed the lives of 10 Iraqis yesterday near a police station. Rory McCarthy reports from Baghdad
Issam Jassem Qassim, a director general from the defence ministry, was shot dead outside his home in the south of the capital on Sunday night by three gunmen. His bodyguard was also killed.
"He was killed in cold blood by the evil hands of the followers of the former regime," said Mishal al-Sarraf, an adviser to the defence minister.
The death follows the killings in recent days of the governor of Mosul and two top officials from the industry and finance ministries.
The justice minister narrowly survived an assassination attempt on Saturday, when a car bomber attacked his convoy killing five of his bodyguards. There is every sign the attackers are specifically targeting their victims in well-organised hits, some of them shootings, others car bombs, that strike at the new government in its first month in office.
Although the new Prime Minister, Mr Iyad Allawi, has promised a tough approach to resolving the security crisis, the violence continues.
Shortly after 8 a.m. yesterday a suicide bomber detonated a truck outside a heavily guarded police station in the al-Alam district of southern Baghdad. The dead included two policemen and at least eight civilians. Another 60 were injured in the blast.
Many of the victims were employees or customers at a line of car workshops near the police station. The buildings were torn apart by the shrapnel from the blast and cars in streets nearby were left burnt and with windscreens smashed. A US officer at the scene said he believed a fuel truck carried the bomb.Meanwhile in the southern city of Basra yesterday a British Royal Air Force Puma helicopter crashed at the city's airport, killing one crew member and injuring two others.
The British Ministry of Defence in London said the crash was an accident and that it would investigate it. Sixty-one British troops have now been killed since the invasion last year.
Separately, the last troops from the Philippines were due to leave Iraq last night. They are pulling out a month ahead of schedule after a Filipino truck driver was kidnapped by a Islamist militant group which demanded that the Philippine contingent, which numbered 51, should pull out to spare the hostage's life.
Among the first to leave last week was the commander of the force. A final convoy of Philippine troops left their base in Hilla, south of Baghdad, yesterday heading towards Kuwait.