World

Bombing Targets Iraqi Police

March 31, 2004 / 6:35 AM EST / CBS/AP

A suicide bomber blew up explosives in his car outside the house of a police chief south of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing himself and wounding seven others, officials said.

The attack came after the head of a U.N. team said better security is vital if Iraq wants to hold elections by a Jan. 31 deadline.

The bombing occurred in the town of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, near where another police chief was shot and killed a week ago and nine police recruits died when assailants sprayed their minibus with small arms fire.

Police Maj. Ali Jawad said guards outside the house of Hillah police chief Brig. Gen. Qeis Hamza opened fire at the car when they saw it speeding toward them, but failed to stop the attacker.

In other developments:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan fired a senior U.N. official, Tun Myat, for failing to properly protect staff before the Aug. 19 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed 22 people, including a top U.N. envoy. Annan said Myat and others "appeared to be blinded by the conviction that U.N. personnel and installations would not become a target of attack, despite the clear warnings to the contrary."

A bomb explosion near a U.S. military convoy west of Baghdad killed an American soldier on Monday, a U.S. official said. Soldiers were reported wounded in a bombing in Ramadi and a rocket attack in Diala. The death brought to at least 586 the number of Americans who have died in Iraq.

Witnesses reported gunfire, and there are reports of a handful of injuries, in a clash in southern Iraq between Spanish troops hundreds of angry Iraqi job-seekers in Najaf. That follows scuffles Monday between British troops and Iraqi protesters in Basra.

Saddam Hussein apparently is practicing what most attorneys would advise: Don't talk. Diplomatic and military officials say the former Iraqi leader has provided little useful information in interrogations so far — and may even be having fun.

Most Australians support the government's plan to keep troops in Iraq until postwar reconstruction there is complete, according to opinion poll results released Tuesday, just days after an opposition leader said he would withdraw Australian forces by Christmas if he won an election later this year.

In Washington, NATO's most senior civilian official said the alliance might be willing to command part of an international security force for Iraq if the U.N. Security Council authorizes it.

Four of those wounded in the suicide bombing were guards, the three others residents of nearby houses, Jawad said. Hamza and his family, who were home at the time of the blast, were unhurt. The explosion damaged the chief's house and those of his neighbors.

Guerrillas often target the police because they view them as collaborators with the U.S.-led occupation, and they often make easier targets because they are less well-armed and protected than the U.S. troops.

Unemployment is so rampant that tens of thousands of policemen put their lives on the line each day, braving suicide bombs, shootings, the contempt of many fellow Iraqis and the wary eyes of their American partners.

"This is a difficult position. If I quit, my children will starve. If I don't, I might be killed," said Sadeq Salman, a 28-year-old policeman who provides for a family of eight.

While most have enlisted because it's a well-paying job, others feel a sense of duty.

"If I give up and others give up, this country would be destroyed. Every honorable person must help this country," said police Capt. Ghazi Faisal, a policeman before the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. At that time, he paid off his superiors so he could leave the force.

Some U.S. soldiers privately say they do not trust the new Iraqi security forces and talk about watching them closely while on joint patrols, or even waking them up while on night duty. U.S. commanders, however, praise the Iraqi forces, who go out on dangerous patrols even though they have lost hundreds of comrades in combat.

Still, for every policeman killed in Iraq, many more are waiting to step in. For many, the salary offered by the U.S.-led coalition is the deciding factor. The policeman's minimum monthly wage of $120 is almost twice what newly recruited teachers get.

In Baghdad Monday, a U.N. envoy said security was key as the June 30 handover of sovereignty approached, to be followed by elections.

"We need to make sure that between now and the 31st of January, there is a modicum of security that will make Iraqi people feel they can go to the polls, that they can run as candidates, without extreme fear," Carina Perelli said after a meeting with Iraqi officials.

Perelli said the U.N. team, the Governing Council and the coalition had to move quickly to meet the election deadline.

"If there is going to be an election on the 31st of January, then all the basic agreements need to be reached for the electoral frame no later than the end of May. Otherwise the date might be compromised," she said.

Mohsen Abdel-Hamid, a Sunni member of the Governing Council, said many council members "spoke about elections and ways of protecting these elections and the mechanism that should be used in order for the election not to be fixed."

Abdel-Hamid said the goal was to conduct clean elections and "achieve the hopes of the Iraqi people, who have been deprived of elections for decades under a dictatorship."