Iraqi Cops In The Crosshairs
Iraqi police and cadets were again the targets of violence Tuesday that claimed 11 lives.
Nine police trainees were killed when gunmen opened fire on their van south of Baghdad, Iraqi police said. Elsewhere, gunmen killed two policemen and wounded two others near their station Tuesday in the northern city of Kirkuk.
Meanwhile, U.S. and British troops tried to control riots over joblessness in Iraq and events in the occupied Palestinian territories.
West of Baghdad, U.S. soldiers fired shots to disperse a violent protest against Israel's killing of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin.
In the southern city of Basra, 14 British troops were wounded in two explosions during a demonstration by about 500 unemployed Iraqi civilians protesting a failure to get jobs with the local customs police.
In other developments:
The attack on the trainees occurred on a road between Musayeb and Hillah when a car pulled in front of the minibus and assailants sprayed the van with small arms fire, police in Hillah said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. military official confirmed that nine police trainees had died.
Iraqi police said one injured trainee survived. The U.S. military official said two had survived.
Rebels often target police and other Iraqis who work with the U.S.-led coalition that is governing Iraq.
The other slain policemen — twin brothers — were shot by assailants in a car in Kirkuk, north of the capital, police Capt. Abdul-Salam Zangana said. He identified the brothers as Ahmed and Mohammed Kadhim. The attack occurred as the police parked their car in a main square and worshippers left a nearby mosque.
During the clash in Basra, British troops fired tear gas and the crowd threw rocks, petrol bombs and a grenade at troops; six civilians were injured, he said.
A British Ministry of Defense spokesman said the soldiers — three of whom were seriously wounded — were evacuated to a nearby British military hospital at Shaibah.
British television showed demonstrators throwing rocks at soldiers riding tanks and standing behind plastic shields. Two Associated Press photographs showed a British soldier running down a street with his head and shoulders on fire.
Some demonstrators shouted slogans in support of Saddam Hussein and condemned Israel's killing of Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Palestinian militant group, in Gaza City on Monday.
"We are all sons of Yassin," they shouted.
In another demonstration further north faced by U.S. troops, Muslim clerics in Ramadi had urged followers to protest the targeted killing of Yassin.
U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police fired shots after protesters burned two police cars and two hand grenades were thrown at a government building, witnesses said. At least two police and three protesters were injured.
The Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah al-Husseini al-Sistani, says in a March 19 letter that the interim constitution "enshrines sectarianism and ethnicity in the future political system in the country."
The proposed three-part presidency shared by Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs "will lead to a dead end and puts the country in an unstable situation and could lead to partition and division," he writes.
Shiites comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's population. They were repressed during Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated dictatorship, and would be likely to wield power in a centralized democratic government.
Shiites have resisted efforts to federate Iraq into subsections. Iraq's minority groups generally support a federal system.
Annan said last week he is sending a U.N. team back to Iraq "as soon as possible" in response to an Iraqi request for help in organizing the political transition and general elections due by Jan. 31.
Al-Sistani's objections have derailed several postwar U.S. plans. His complaints about the interim government drafting a constitution led to changes in the timetable. His opposition to a U.S.-backed plan for caucuses led that idea to be scrapped. And his doubts about the interim constitution delayed its signing by a week.