CONFLICT IN IRAQ
At least 10 Iraqis dead in suicide attack
Hundreds of army recruits were in line near Syrian border
James Glanz, New York Times
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Baghdad -- A suicide bomber wearing a vest laden with explosives blew
himself up outside an army recruitment center in a remote northern village
on the Syrian border Friday, an official with the Iraqi Interior Ministry
said.
The Iraqi official said the attack killed 26 people and wounded at least 30,
although U.S. military officials put the casualty figures far lower: 10 dead
and 21 wounded.
Hundreds of young men had flocked from the countryside around the village,
Rabiya, to sign up as army recruits at the center, and a witness said they
were lined up as many as 10 abreast when the bomb went off. Smoke and fire
belched from the place where the blast occurred, and survivors ran from the
scene, letting their recruitment papers flutter to the ground, said Faris
Hatam, 23, who lives nearby.
The terrorist organization al Qaeda in Iraq immediately claimed
responsibility for the attack, but the authenticity of the statement could
not be verified.
Rabiya has been a trouble spot for U.S. forces because it continues to be a
major entry point from Syria for foreign fighters who U.S. military
officials say make up a large number of the suicide bombers in the country.
But it was unclear whether this bomber was an Iraqi or a foreigner.
A resident who gave his name only as Khalid said that he had helped deliver
16 corpses to family members, but that fragments of other bodies were
scattered over the area, making a full count difficult. Al Qaeda in Iraq
claimed at least 60 dead.
Rabiya is a small agricultural town surrounded by rough flatlands and
desert, about 75 miles west of Mosul. It has a population of a few thousand
people, mostly Sunni Arabs. In late May, a car bomb exploded at the Rabiya
border crossing, shutting the crossing for a week and creating a line of
trucks and other vehicles waiting to enter from Syria that stretched for 17
miles.
For months, the U.S. military had largely ignored the region surrounding
Rabiya. But this spring military leaders decided that the influx of foreign
insurgents was too high and reassigned almost the entire 3rd Armored Cavalry
Regiment there from a deployment south of Baghdad.
The U.S. military also reported that on Thursday one Army soldier died in a
vehicle accident in Baghdad, and two Marines died when insurgents attacked
their patrol in a town called Cykla, 120 miles west of the city. The
military had previously said that a patrol had been attacked by insurgents
in Cykla from three buildings, which had been destroyed with precision bombs
in an air strike.
The two Marines who died in combat were killed when insurgents attacked
their unit with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, the military said.
Two roadside bombs also exploded near the northern city of Kirkuk, at least
one of them targeting an American military convoy, but no fatalities were
reported by local police.
The Iraqi Special Tribunal questioned former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
on Friday about his regime's brutal quashing of an uprising by southern
Shiites in 1991, the Associated Press reported. He answered questions on his
own for about 45 minutes, the account said, citing Raid Juhi, the chief
investigative judge of the Iraqi Special Tribunal.
The tribunal was set up to try Hussein and other members of his regime for
atrocities committed during his rule. But it has been convulsed in recent
days over an attempt by a commission run by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed
Chalabi to remove Juhi because of alleged connections to Hussein's Baath
Party.
Hussein is expected to go to trial as early as September for his role in the
killing of 150 men in Dujail, a town north of Baghdad, after an attempt on
his life there in 1982. But he is also expected to face charges for his role
in the suppression of the Shiites and for the killing of tens of thousands
of Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s.
Also Friday, conflicting accounts emerged on the writing of Iraq's
constitution, which is supposed to be completed by Aug. 15.
Bahaa al-Araji, a prominent Shiite member of the committee that is charged
to write the constitution, said on Friday that the document was close to
being finished. "Almost all the points and chapters in the constitution
draft are agreed upon except for the federalism issue," al-Araji said.
Federalism refers to the creation of regional states that would assume some
of the governing powers that have historically been concentrated in Baghdad.
Federalism has been among the most contentious issues facing the writers of
the constitution. The Kurds in the north, who have enjoyed de facto autonomy
since the 1991 war, and many Shiites in the south favor a devolution of
power to the outlying regions of Iraq. But the Sunni Arabs, who held power
in Baghdad during Hussein's rule, have generally favored a strong
centralized state with control over Iraq's oil reserves, which lie mostly in
the Kurdish and Shiite sectors
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