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Dozens of bodies found in the Tigris
Officials were due to unveil a new Iraqi government Thursday after a day of violence in which nearly 60 bodies were fished out of the Tigris river, 19 Iraqi army soldiers were executed in a football stadium and outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi dodged a late-night assassination attempt.With sectarian tensions running high Wednesday, President Jalal Talabani said a new Iraqi government would finally be unveiled, but senior members of the United Iraqi Alliance, which won the January elections, later said the cabinet was unlikely to be announced before Sunday. Talibani also announced the discovery of the bodies in the river south of the Iraqi capital. "They were killed and they threw the bodies in the Tigris ... We have the full names of those who were killed and of those criminals who committed these crimes," Talabani said. Police said the Tigris had washed up 57 bodies of men and children in Suwayrah, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the capital, between the towns of Al-Wihda and Hafriyah, in an insurgent stronghold. The corpses turned up in an area downriver from Madain where unconfirmed reports over the weekend said Shiite hostages were taken by Sunni rebels. Iraqi officials later denied there had been any hostage-taking. "The terrorists committed crimes there, and it is not true that there were no hostages, there were," said Talabani, rebutting officials in the outgoing government, including the interior minister. The relentless violence in a span of 24 hours cost at least 33 lives and included a car bomb late Wednesday that targeted the 59-year-old Allawi and killed two Iraqi policemen. "He had attended an important meeting to discuss the formation of the government and was on his way back home when a car bomber blew himself up near the convoy as it approached the checkpoint," said Allawi spokesman Thaer al-Naqib. "Thank God, the prime minister is well, but some policemen and members of his security team were killed," Naqib said, calling it the fifth attempt on Allawi's life since the ex-Baathist was tapped by the Americans to lead Iraq in the summer of 2004. An interior ministry spokesman said earlier that two policemen were killed and one wounded in the attack, which happened about 11:00 pm (1900 GMT) and involved a pickup truck packed with TNT and mortar rounds. The ministry spokesman said an officer in the previous army of Saddam Hussein was arrested near the scene of the bombing. The checkpoint near the park leads to Allawi's home and the Iraqi National Accord party headquarters. The site was the scene of previous attacks including a truck bombing January 24 that killed four and wounded 24. Naqib said members of Allawi's parliamentary bloc were travelling with him, but was unable to identify them or say anything about their condition. In another grim incident, insurgents executed 19 soldiers in Haditha, 260 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of the Iraqi capital, an interior ministry official said. "They were taken to the stadium where they were executed," he said. "Only one soldier survived and he has been taken to the town's hospital." Before the late-night attack near Allawi's headquarters, three more car bombs exploded in the capital as insurgents stepped up attacks after a relative lull following the January 30 election. Two people were killed, including a child, hospital sources said, in a car bomb attack in the western district of Amiriyah, that appeared to target a US patrol, while 11 people were wounded in two blasts in the city's southern Dura district, security sources said. In a third incident in Dura, three people were killed in a drive-by shooting, said an interior ministry official. The Al-Qaeda-linked group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a statement on the Internet, said it carried out the three suicide attacks. In the western city of Ramadi, two suicide car bombs exploded, but there were no US or Iraqi casualties, the military said. South of Baghdad, Iraqi police Major Bassem Shaker was gunned down outside his home in Karmah bin Said near Nasiriyah, a provincial police spokesman said. On the political front, Talabani said on state-run Iraqiya television that prime minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari would unveil his government Thursday. But members of Jaafari's Shiite United Iraqi Alliance deflated hopes for the announcement of a government. Jaafari spokesman Adnan Ali al-Kadhimi said the list of names would not be ready, and Shiite politician Ali al-Dabbagh said parliamentary leaders were still waiting to hear back from Sunni members on a possible list of cabinet candidates. The national assembly is scheduled to meet Sunday. Another sticking point appeared to involve the number of ministries allocated to Allawi's party, which came in third in the elections and is eagerly courted by the Kurds to temper the influence of clerics in the alliance. Turkey's armed forces chief, General Hilmi Ozkok, meanwhile, warned that Iraqi Kurdish attempts to take control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk could throw the entire region into turmoil. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-04-21 |
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