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Iraq News, BAGHDAD, Iraq—In the second major assault on Baghdad’s police force in two days, two car bombs—including at least one detonated by a suicide attacker—exploded next to an Iraqi police station just outside Baghdad’s Green Zone on Saturday, killing seven people and wounding 59, mostly police. Insurgents killed 16 officers in an attack the day before.
The US military announced that four American military personnel died in separate attacks Friday and Saturday.
Two car bombs exploded at 9:30 a.m. (0630GMT) Saturday near a checkpoint leading to Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the offices of Iraq’s interim government and several foreign missions, including the US Embassy. Only one blast was heard at the time, suggesting the bombs may have been timed to detonate simultaneously.
Bursts of automatic fire followed the thunderous explosion, which shook windows several hundred yards away in buildings on the opposite side of the Tigris River from where the attack occurred.
Health officials said the bodies of seven people killed by the blast and 59 wounded were brought to two Baghdad hospitals. They said most of the victims were policemen.
Adel Hassan, a policeman who survived the attack with head injuries, said at a hospital crammed with victims that a “suicide car bomber sped into our place [the police station] . . . and then there was an explosion.”
Meanwhile, the special advisor to the UN secretary-general, told a Dutch newspaper that holding elections in the current climate of violence and insecurity in Iraq is impossible. Lakhdar Brahim told NRC Handelsblad in an interview published Saturday that the vote, planned for January 30, could only take place “if first and foremost security improves.”
If the poll took place only in secure areas of Iraq it would exclude the Sunni minority, who live in extremely tense areas such as Fallujah and Samarra, Brahimi said.
Expressing his personal views, Brahimi issued an appeal to the international community for help in bringing order to the country, where more than 30 people died in a span of 24 hours Saturday in bomb blasts and suicide attacks.
He also criticized the United States for invading the country in March 2003 which he said had created more problems than it had solved.
“This [situation] does not work. We have to find something which does. If we let the situation get even worse, it will just become more dangerous.”
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