2 Bombs, 3 Deaths In Iraq
An explosion in Baghdad near a U.S. patrol killed a soldier and an Iraqi interpreter, the military said, while a car bomb blew up near a U.S. Air Force base north of the capital Monday, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding 25 others, an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps official said.
The vehicle explosion occurred outside the base near the town of Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, the official, Saeed Kadhim, said. The wounded were taken to nearby hospitals, he said.
U.S. officials in Baghdad could not confirm the attack.
The explosion in Baghdad wounded three U.S. soldiers, besides the deaths, the military said in a statement. The attack on the 1st Armored Division patrol occurred Sunday in the capital's western Abu Ghraib district. The names of the dead and wounded were withheld pending notification of their families.
On Sunday in Baghdad, rebels fired three rockets toward the U.S.-led coalition headquarters. One hit inside the compound, wounding a U.S. soldier. Two landed outside the heavily guarded area, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding five, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A doctor at nearby Yarmouk Hospital said one person died and 10 were wounded.
The attacks brought the number of U.S. dead in Iraq to at least 572.
In other developments:
The military has said it is investigating the shootings late Thursday. It reported the shooting death of an Iraqi at a checkpoint, and the circumstances of that death matched details reported by Al-Arabiya about the deaths of correspondent Ali al-Khatib and cameraman Ali Abdel-Aziz.
The latest violence came after the first anniversary Saturday of the start of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein.
But there were no street demonstrations, either for or against the war, in Iraq. Many Iraqis are preoccupied by the fragile security situation in their country, and even those who opposed Saddam are uncomfortable with the invasion and extended occupation of Iraq by foreign armies.
The United States says Iraq will be sovereign, no longer under military occupation, on June 30. But most power will reside within the world's largest U.S. Embassy, backed by 110,000 U.S. troops.
The fledgling Iraqi government will be capable of tackling little more than drawing up a budget and preparing for elections, top U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
"We're still here. We'll be paying a lot of attention and we'll have a lot of influence," a top U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. "We're going to have the world's largest diplomatic mission with a significant amount of political weight."
In just over three months, the mantle of sovereignty in Iraq will be passed to an interim government. Its composition and the manner of its choosing will be decided after a United Nations team arrives this week.
But with Iraqi elections scheduled for December or January, the interim government will last a fleeting seven months at most: a butterfly's life, in legislative terms.
Since the U.S.-led occupation regime will have a hand in choosing Iraq's next government, the body will lack a mandate for anything but administrative tasks. Many envision a team of nonpartisan Iraqi technocrats who concentrate on keeping the country functioning.
The short-lived government's main work includes passing the 2005 national budget and preparing for elections, the U.S. official told reporters in a dinner meeting.
The U.S. ambassador will hoard a large measure of influence on Iraq, and the fledgling government will wean itself only slowly from American money, troops and advisers.
The American face in Iraq will undergo only a symbolic change, with the ambassador installed in a new chancery building but U.S. affairs still handled in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace.
The ambassador will also have a say in the spending of $8 billion of the massive $18.4 billion U.S. aid package approved by Congress in November, a huge tool with which to influence Iraq's affairs.
The United Nations team that arrives at the end of the week will attend to technical aspects of selecting the interim government, Governing Council member Adnan Pachachi said. A second team that arrives in early April will include top U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and will handle final negotiations, Pachachi said.
As Iraq marches toward independence, many U.S. moves will shape governance and society here long after the occupation's end.
A week ago, U.S. officials announced new restrictions on border crossing that won't be fully implemented for a year — long after sovereignty is in the hands of Iraqis.