Baghdad, Iraq – A few hundred Iraqi police recruits continued to be treated Monday after an outbreak of severe food poisoning Sunday that triggered a mutinous episode in southern Iraq, and the capital was shaken by the assassination of the vice president’s brother.
Officials in Numaniyah, about 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, said disorder broke out at a military base there Monday. Angry recruits stoned the car of their commander.
Authorities said they had not yet established that the food poisoning was intentional. However, several people connected with the base dining facility were arrested, including the food supplier, military spokesman Brig. Gen. Khasim Mosawi said.
Some local officials feared that the poisoning reflected a new and more frightening form of terrorism in an area that has been relatively free of violence. But a security official who requested anonymity said he thought the soldiers were poisoned by meat served after its expiration date.
About 350 of the soldiers remained in two local hospitals Monday, officials said.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, armed men arriving in a convoy of about 10 vehicles stormed the house of Amer Hashimi, killed him and his guards and kidnapped his son. Hashimi was the eldest brother of Vice President Tariq Hashimi, a top-ranking Sunni Arab politician.
Amer Hashimi was the third sibling of the vice president to be assassinated. Their sister, Maysoon Hashimi, was killed along with her driver in April, two weeks after a brother, Mahmoud Hashimi, was killed while driving with friends.
Amer Hashimi was an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army and became the army’s chief of staff from April to September 2004. He and four subordinates were dismissed after the assassination of a high-ranking officer in the Defense Ministry.
Sunni political leaders said they held the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responsible for the killing because it had failed to bring Shiite Muslim militias under control. The militias have been accused of carrying out killings of minority Sunnis.
The trial of former dictator Hussein resumed Monday after a nearly two-week recess. During testimony, a Kurdish woman accused the deposed government of burying her family alive after destroying her village, rounding up men, women and children and herding them into camps where they were tortured and left hungry and exposed to the elements.
Hussein’s defense attorneys again boycotted the trial, objecting to the court’s decision to remove the case’s first judge, who was widely perceived as too lenient toward the former president and the defense.
Also Monday, the U.S. military reported the deaths of three Marines and one Army soldier. The Marines were killed by enemy fire in Anbar province. The soldier was killed by small-arms fire in Baghdad. Their names were not released.
