Car Bombing and 2 Other Attacks in Iraq Leave at Least 10 Dead By Ian Fisher Associated Press | New York Times
Thursday 09 October 2003
Iraqis walked through the blast area outside a police station in suburban Baghdad.
A station wagon packed with explosives exploded inside a police station compound in one of Baghdad's biggest slums early today, killing at least 8 people and wounding more than 40.
Witnesses said the car, a white Oldsmobile, rushed through the gate and into the compound at high speed, possibly running down two policemen in the process. The blast left a crater 10 feet by 8 feet, and 4 feet deep, a United States military officer at the scene said.
At almost the same hour across town, in Baghdad's richest neighborhood, a 34-year old Spanish diplomat was assassinated at his residence after he opened the gate to a man dressed as a Shiite Muslim cleric, a Spanish official said.
The attack appeared to have been well planned and executed, the official said. The night before, people were seen acting suspiciously around the embassy and nearby residences, perhaps conducting surveillance, the official said.
When the diplomat, Jos� Antonio Bernal, who was the deputy intelligence officer at the embassy, according to a Spanish official, realized something was amiss this morning, he tried to run. But three men were waiting outside in a brown car. When Mr. Bernal, barefoot and wearing only shorts, stumbled and fell, one or two men shot him at point-blank range, about 30 yards from the gate to his house, the official said.
In a separate attack northeast of Baghdad, an American soldier was killed when his convoy was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade in the town of Baqubah. It was the 92nd death of an American soldier in combat since President Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq over on May 1.
Suspicions for the attacks immediately fell on members of the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
"Saddam's group does not want Iraq to settle down," one wounded police officer, Ahamad Jassim Resen, 30, said. "The Americans are helping us, but Saddam's people don't want this country to get back on its feet."
The attacks also raise questions about how it is going to be possible to stop terror incidents, given that the country does not have an effective police force and that the Americans have concentrated on protecting themselves, living behind walls and patrolling in tanks and with heavy weapons. As a result, coalition officials here say that the former regime loyalists, supported perhaps by outsiders, are turning to so-called soft targets, which include the Iraqi police, who do not even have bullet-proof vests.
The attacks also raise the question of how diplomats, the United Nations or humanitarian agencies are going to do their jobs here. "It is a juggling act," a Western official said. On the one hand, he said, to be effective, one must be able to move about, to meet and talk with Iraqis, whether officials, businessmen or just ordinary Iraqis. But that is almost impossible to do these days, he said, given security concerns.
Mr. Bernal, the Spanish diplomat shot to death today, was the first diplomat not associated with the United Nations to be the direct target for assassination here, other diplomats said. There are about a dozen embassies in Baghdad, ranging in size from one or two diplomats to six or eight.
A Spanish official said the embassy had had intelligence reports that it was a target, primarily because of Spain's support for the United States in the war. But Mr. Bernal might also have been killed by former members of the Hussein government with whom he had worked in his intelligence capacity, the official said.
The bomb at the police station was the latest aimed at Iraqis who have taken official posts under the postwar authority and who are regarded in some quarters as collaborating with the American enemy.
Jassim Mihsin, 31, an officer whose hearing and hand were hurt in the blast today, said he did not consider himself a collaborator, but said the danger was too great to continue being a policeman.
"I don't want anymore work with the police," said Mr. Mihsin, who has been an officer for 13 years and who rejoined the force after Mr. Hussein's ouster. "I will get a simple job to avoid problems and explosions."
Other victims said there was little warning before the blast. "We were just talking and then I felt something like a big fire," said Najah Khadim Lafta, 48, a construction worker, who was heavily bandaged and still bleeding in his bed at Al Sadr hospital. "I felt myself thrown into the air."
Witnesses said they saw several policemen, including the two at the gate, lying dead around the destroyed vehicles.
The blast was at the police station in Sadr City, about five miles from downtown Baghdad. It is a Shiite neighborhood, and most of the residents are followers of a radical, anti-American, Muqtada Sadr.
After the blast, American soldiers surrounded Mr. Sadr's office, but were forced to withdraw after his followers, many armed, showed up.
Immediately after the bomb went off, many young men poured into the police compound, which was being refurbished, but instead of helping the wounded began taking weapons off the soldiers and money from the dead and seriously injured, said Mr. Resem, one of the wounded police officers.
American soldiers soon arrived and threw up rolls of razor wire and a barricade of 20 or so Humvees. The crowd on the other side grew increasingly menacing, with most of their anger aimed at journalists. The crowd did not want the journalists taking their pictures.
The American soldiers eventually ordered journalists to leave for their own safety, and reporters and photographers had to run a gantlet of angry men. A woman who works as an interpreter for French television was grabbed, the long scarf she had used to cover herself ripped away and the camera equipment she was carrying stolen from her.
Inside the police station, an American military team conducted an investigation, an Army captain said, and journalists were not allowed in.
When L. Paul Bremer III, the American diplomat who heads the occupational authority, was asked at a news briefing today about the status of investigations into earlier bombings, including the one at the United Nations offices, he said that the question should be directed to the Iraqi police because they were responsible for investigations.
But Iraqi police officials, and American officials alike, have said that the Americans have taken the lead in the investigations into major attacks.
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Mitayo Potosi
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