http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/international/middleeast/03iraq.html

Democracy is breaking out all over Iraq



Insurgent Attacks in Iraq Kill at Least 33

By EDWARD WONG
Published: June 3, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 2 - Insurgents carried out attacks across
a broad swath of central and northern Iraq on Thursday, including
a motorcycle suicide bombing and three car bombings, killing at
least 33 people and wounding dozens of others.

The strikes were the latest in a series of assaults that began
Sunday and that appear to be in response to an ambitious
counterinsurgency effort led by the Iraqi government, in which
tens of thousands of Iraqi security forces have been assigned
to police the streets of Baghdad.

Much of the violence earlier in the week unfolded in western
Baghdad, but most of the deadly attacks on Thursday took place
outside the capital, as the insurgency, largely led by Sunni Arabs,
appeared to be seeking to apply pressure to the Shiite- and
Kurdish-led government.

The American military said Thursday that three soldiers died
Wednesday in separate incidents in northern and western Iraq.

In the capital, officials on a Shiite-led committee of the
National Assembly overseeing the writing of a constitution met
Thursday with frustrated Sunni leaders to discuss how Sunnis
might play a bigger role in the process. Since a visit last
month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Shiite officials
have been saying they intend to broaden Sunnis' role in the
process in hopes of calming the insurgency and drawing more
Sunnis into the political system.

Contributing to ongoing tensions, Sunni Arabs have accused a
Shiite militia of assassinating Sunni Arab clerics. But in an
interview with The Associated Press, Interior Minister Bayan
Jabr, who once played a leading role in the militia, the Badr
Brigade, denied the claim, which he said had been investigated.

Mr. Jabr also said that more mosques and clerics from the Shiite
majority had been attacked than those belonging to the Sunni
minority, and that 80 percent of the roughly 12,000 Iraqi
civilians killed in the past 18 months were Shiites.

In the deadliest single attack on Thursday, insurgents gunned
down nine people in a bazaar in Huriya, a northwestern Baghdad
neighborhood. The insurgents drove up in three sedans and opened
fire at shoppers, an Interior Ministry official said. It was not
known why this particular market was attacked.

On Thursday morning, a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant
in the town of Tuz Khurmato, about 60 miles south of the
contested city of Kirkuk, killing at least 8 people and wounding
22 others, the Interior Ministry official said. The bomb was
aimed at a convoy of bodyguards assigned to protect Rowsch
Shaways, a deputy prime minister and a senior member of one of
the two main Kurdish parties. Mr. Shaways who was not with the
convoy at the time.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna, a militant group active in the north,
posted an Internet message claiming responsibility.

In Kirkuk, a suicide car bomb exploded near a convoy carrying
foreign oil workers as it entered a compound that houses oil
technicians, killing an Iraqi child standing nearby and injuring
11 other people, the Interior Ministry official said.

Also in the morning, a suicide car bomb exploded in the city
of Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, next to a convoy
carrying Hussein Alwan al-Tamimi, the deputy chief of the
provincial council, killing Mr. Tamimi and three of his guards
and injuring four policemen, the Interior Ministry official said.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the group led by the militant Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility on the Net for the latest attack.

Far to the north, in the beleaguered city of Mosul, a suicide
motorcycle bomb exploded at 3:45 p.m. on Thursday at a traffic
light in the city center, killing at least 7 people and injuring
at least 10 others, said Mishal Rahoo, an employee in the local
health department.

The explosion took place near the headquarters of the Mosul
police force, which may have been the target. Though suicide car
bombs have been common in Iraq, the use of motorcycles for such a
purpose is rare.

A roadside bomb blast in Mahmudiya, a town in the Euphrates
valley south of Baghdad, killed three people and wounded three
others, and in southern Baghdad, insurgents attacked a police
patrol with a car bomb and gunfire, killing a female bystander
and injuring another civilian and a policeman, The Associated
Press reported.

Among the American casualties on Wednesday, one soldier died of
injuries from gunfire near Ramadi, in Anbar Province, the military
said Thursday. Another was killed by a roadside bomb near Ramadi,
and a soldier in Kirkuk died of injuries not related to combat,
a military spokesman said, adding that American officials had
begun an investigation.





Why weren't US troops guarding this material ? Too busy pumping
oil out of the country ?


Arms Material Missing in Iraq

UNITED NATIONS, June 2 (AP) - Satellite imagery experts have
determined that material that could be used to make biological
or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been
removed from 109 sites in Iraq, United Nations weapons inspectors
said in a report obtained Thursday.

In the report to the Security Council, the acting chief weapons
inspector, Demetrius Perricos, said he had reached no conclusions
about who removed the items or where they went.

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting
from Mosul for this article.