Iraq: 13 Insurgents Hanged
Iraq hanged 13 insurgents Thursday, marking the first time militants have been executed in the country since the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein nearly three years ago, the government said.
The Cabinet announcement listed the name of only one of those hanged, Shukair Farid, a former policeman in the northern city of Mosul, who allegedly confessed that he had worked with Syrian foreign fighters to enlist fellow Iraqis to carry out assassinations against police and civilians.
"The competent authorities have today carried out the death sentences of 13 terrorists," the Cabinet statement said.
It said Farid had "confessed that foreigners recruited him to spread the fear through killings and abductions."
In September, Iraq hanged three convicted murderers, the first executions since the 2003 ouster of Saddam. They were convicted of killing three police officers, kidnapping and rape.
Iraqi authorities reinstated the death penalty after the end of the U.S.-led occupation in June 2004 so they would have the option of executing Saddam if he is convicted of crimes committed by his regime.
In other recent developments:
Death sentences must be approved by the three-member presidential council headed by President Jalal Talabani, who opposes capital punishment. In the September executions and again in the Thursday hangings, Talabani refused to sign the authorization himself but gave his two vice presidents the authority.
Meanwhile, at least 16 more people and wounded 19, all civilians, police said. One of the deadly blasts targeted an Iraqi army patrol in Amariyah, a mostly Sunni neighborhood in west Baghdad, killing nine civilians and wounding six.
At Yarmouk hospital in west Baghdad a car bomb was detonated killing at least two people and wounding 13 as they entered the clinic, according to police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud.
A car bomb exploded Thursday night near a Sunni mosque in east Baghdad, killing five civilians and wounding 12 others, police said. Capt. Mahir Hamad Mousa identified the target as the Al-Israa Walmiraj mosque in the New Baghdad region of the capital.
The U.S. military also confirmed that a mass abduction from a security firm was the work of kidnappers masquerading as Interior Ministry commandos. In the audacious attack Wednesday, gunmen dressed as Interior Ministry commandos stormed into the company's east Baghdad headquarters and took away 50 people, many of them ex-military personnel from the Saddam Hussein regime, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports.
"We can confirm based on our investigation that individuals dressed like this, in chocolate-chip desert combat uniforms, riding in eight vehicles, drove up and kidnapped 50 local nationals," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said Thursday, referring to his combat fatigues. "We don't know who did that. In our conversations with Iraqi authorities, they don't know either."
The al-Rawafid Security Co. was attacked by gunmen who arrived in a convoy of vehicles, including several white SUVs and a pickup truck mounted with a heavy gun, that they used to carry away the hostages, said al-Mohammedawi.
The victims did not resist because they believed their abductors were police special forces working for the Interior Ministry, he said.
"It was a terrorist act," ministry Undersecretary Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Khefaji said.
The Sunni minority, which was dominant in the country under Saddam, has complained bitterly that it is under attack from death squads associated with the Interior Ministry, in charge of Iraq's police. And, over the past two weeks, since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, violence has become increasingly sectarian. Hundreds have been killed.
Lynch said that the U.S. military believed at least 452 civilians had died in that violence through the first of this week, although he offered no break down according religious sect or ethnicity.
Several other large blasts were heard in the capital Thursday, but police only had details about one, a roadside bomb aimed at a police patrol in Jihad, also mostly Sunni western neighborhood, Dozier reports. Three bystanders were hurt.
Police and the U.S. military reported Wednesday finding the bodies of 24 men who were garroted or shot in the head, most of them in an abandoned bus in a tough Baghdad Sunni neighborhood. The killings appeared to be a continuation of the sectarian killing since the shrine attack.
Many of the dead in that period were Sunnis, killed at close range after apparently being captured by overwhelming numbers of attackers. The nature of the killings suggested that a well-armed and organized force carried out the attacks.
There have also been repeated attacks against the Shiite-led security forces. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr and one of his assistants may themselves have been targets of assassination attempts Wednesday.