Baghdad, Iraq – A suicide attacker detonated an explosives belt in a crowd of Iraqi army recruits today in a town near the Syrian border, killing at least 25 and wounding 35, a police general said. The U.S. military put the toll at 20 dead and 25 injured.
Officials said the attack in Rabiah occurred in the midst of recruits training in a secured area, and they speculated some of the guards might have allowed the bomber to enter the post about 230 miles north of Baghdad.
A recently released U.S. report said Iraqi security forces have suffered from inadequate vetting processes and are highly vulnerable to infiltration by insurgents.
The rebels have made Iraqi police and army recruits a prime target as the United States puts urgency on getting those forces trained sufficiently to assume greater security responsibilities so American and other foreign troops can begin going home next year.
In other violence, two Marines were killed by insurgent gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in western Iraq, prompting U.S. jets to drop high-tech bombs that destroyed three buildings used by rebels as firing positions, officials said today.
The Marines reported killing nine insurgents, five of them believed to be Syrians, during Thursday’s engagement in a village west of Haditha, about 170 miles west of Baghdad.
An Army soldier died in central Baghdad from injuries suffered in a single-vehicle accident, the U.S. command said. The three deaths brought to 11 the number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq this week.
Iraq’s chief investigative judge, meanwhile, said Saddam Hussein was called to a hearing Thursday to undergo questioning about the crushing of a Shiite uprising in 1991, which erupted after U.S.-led forces drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.
Saddam answered questions alone during the 45-minute hearing, said Judge Raid Juhi of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, set up to try the former dictator.
Juhi said he expects to soon conclude the criminal investigation into events around the Shiite uprising as well as Saddam’s campaign in the late 1980s to force Iraqi Kurds from wide areas of the north. A trial date for the former dictator will be announced in the coming days, Juhi said.
Saddam is expected to stand trial in September for his alleged role in the 1982 massacre of Shiite Muslims in Dujail north of Baghdad. It would be the first of what are expected to be about a dozen trials involving Saddam and his key henchmen.
Following a rash of attacks and abductions of diplomats in Iraq, the Philippine Embassy in Baghdad has relocated its employees to Amman, Jordan, Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Jose Brillantes reported.
“We continue to maintain our diplomatic ties with Iraq,” Brillantes said. “The embassy in Baghdad remains open and the diplomats in Baghdad are in Amman for security reasons occasioned by the recent kidnappings of diplomats.” It was not clear if all of the embassy’s Filipino staff have relocated.
Iraqi militants last month freed Filipino accountant Robert Tarongoy after almost eight months in captivity.
Tarongoy, 31, was the second Filipino known to have been taken hostage in Iraq. Truck driver Angelo de la Cruz was freed last year after the Philippine government granted the militants’ demand for the early withdrawal of its small peacekeeping contingent from Iraq.
On Thursday, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said the American military was considering offering protection to foreign diplomats in Baghdad after al-Qaida agents killed three Arab envoys this month.
“Coalition forces … are planning to look at this problem and see what could be done to fix the security for the diplomats,” Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said.
He spoke a day after al-Qaida in Iraq announced it had killed Algeria’s chief envoy in Iraq and another diplomat because of their government’s ties to the United States and its crackdown on Islamic extremists.
Al-Qaida in Iraq also claimed responsibility for the kidnap-slaying of Egypt’s top envoy and the attempted abduction of two other Muslim diplomats in a campaign to undercut support for the new Iraqi government within the Arab and Muslim world.
The United States is gambling that political progress will help curb the insurgency by luring away Sunni Arabs, who account for most of the rebels.
Key to that strategy is preparation of a new constitution, which must be approved by parliament by Aug. 15 and submitted to the voters in a referendum two months later.
Today, key members of the committee writing the charter said they had almost finished the draft and expected to submit it to parliament by the end of the month.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it captured a cell leader of the notorious al-Qaida in Iraq terror group.
Ammar Abu Bara, also known as Amar Hussein Hasan, was arrested Wednesday in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, by troops of the Army’s 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, a U.S. statement said.
The statement said Abu Bara was taken into custody during a search operation in a neighborhood in northern Mosul. Abu Bara replaced Abu Talha, former terror cell leader for the Mosul area who was arrested last month, the statement added.
