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Wed Mar 2, 1:00 PM ET |
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BAGHDAD (AFP) - Gunmen assassinated a judge serving on the tribunal set up to try Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), officials said, as suicide car bombers killed 10 people in attacks on an Iraqi army base and a checkpoint in Baghdad.
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The renewed violence came as an Iraqi-Swede hostage appeared in a video saying he feared he would be executed, a day after a French journalist appeared in a tape pleading for help.
Investigative judge Barwize Mohamed Marwane and his son Arayan, who worked as a clerk for the Iraqi Special Tribunal, were gunned down Tuesday as they stepped out of their Baghdad home, a court source said.
They were the first known members of the tribunal, set up in December 2003 by the US-led coalition to try Saddam and his lieutenants, to be killed.
In a second incident Tuesday, gunmen shot and seriously wounded another investigative judge, Wayed al-Jadr, moments after he left his courthouse in eastern Baghdad, an Iraqi justice official said.
Insurgents have killed 20 judges across Iraq (news - web sites) since Saddam's regime was toppled in April 2003, the official said.
Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, former vice president Taha Yasin Ramadan and three others will be the first to go on trial, facing charges of crimes against humanity, the special tribunal said Monday.
At least seven people were killed Wednesday and 30 wounded when a car blew up outside an army base in western Baghdad, hospital officials said.
The same base was hit a few hours later in a mortar attack that killed one soldier and wounded nine others.
Would-be recruits and soldiers were queuing by the entrance to the base at the disused Al-Muthanna airport when a white car sped up to the gates, witnesses said.
"As he arrived, he blew himself up. Two soldiers were lifted up into the air and knocked across the street," said Hussein Mohammed, who was 20 metres (yards) away when the car exploded.
In the second attack, three soldiers were killed and six wounded when a car bomber blew himself up at an army checkpoint in southwest Baghdad, said an army officer.
The latest blasts came two days after a suicide car bomb killed at least 118 people in Hilla, in the deadliest single attack since the fall of Saddam's regime two years ago.
Hundreds of angry Iraqis protested in the predominantly Shiite Muslim city for the second day on Wednesday, demanding the resignation of local officials they blame for lax security which allowed the attack.
In further unrest, two policemen were shot dead in separate incidents in the northern city of Mosul, police said. US-led forces killed two insurgents in the same city and injured another after an ambush, the US army said.
In Ramadi, a rebel stronghold west of Baghdad, three civilians were wounded during a firefight between US forces and gunmen, hospital officials said.
Two Turkish truckers were shot dead in the northern oil refinery town of Baiji, and the bodies of two Iraqi soldiers were found in the same region, police said.
In the latest development in Iraq's long-running hostage crisis, a kidnapped Iraqi-Swede appeared in a new video obtained by AFP, appealing to the pope and to the king of Sweden to save his life.
"I have been transferred to the execution unit of the Iraqi Vengeance Brigades, which certainly means my death and execution," said Minas Ibrahim al-Yussufi, the secretary general of Iraq's Christian Democratic Party, who was kidnapped on January 28 in Mosul.
A French journalist missing in Iraq for almost two months made a desperate appeal for help in a video obtained by AFP on Tuesday.
They were the first images of Liberation newspaper's Florence Aubenas since she disappeared with her Iraqi fixer Hussein Hanun al-Saadi from her Baghdad hotel on January 5.
The front pages of all of France's dailies were given over to the video, which showed Aubenas looking gaunt and desperate.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told parliament there had been no demand from and no dialogue with her kidnappers, while calling on a maverick lawmaker singled out by name in the video to help free the journalist.
Raffarin urged MP Didier Julia to brief French intelligence officers on all he knew and said France must "work on one front, under one authority" and "without any parallel diplomacy" to obtain the release of Aubenas.
On the political front, the leading Shiite candidate for Iraq's post-elections prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, met Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani.
He met the other main Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, on Tuesday.
The Kurdish Alliance came second with 75 seats in the new 275-seat national assembly in January 30 elections and has emerged as potential kingmaker in choosing the next government.
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