Iraqi PM Vows To Curb Violence
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki promised on Tuesday to push forward with his efforts to curb rampant sectarian and militia violence in the country after a series of brazen attacks, including the kidnappings of 50 people in broad daylight in Baghdad.
Al-Maliki, who announced a plan late last month aimed at restoring order in Baghdad, acknowledged the deteriorating security situation in the capital and other areas but did not comment on Monday's abductions.
"The parties that are against the political process have increased their bloody operations to derail and bring down the national unity government, but, God willing, they will lose," he said Tuesday at a news conference.
An example of one of these "bloody operations" was a gruesome discovery by police Tuesday. Police found nine severed heads in fruit boxes northeast of Baghdad, the second such discovery in less than a week.
The boxes containing the heads, all from men, were discovered by a highway in the village of Hadid, near Baqouba, a mixed city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad that has seen a recent rise in sectarian violence.
The heads were transferred to the city morgue and an investigation was under way, according to the Joint Cooperation Center, which is run by Iraqi and U.S. forces.
Iraqi police also found eight severed heads in the village on Saturday, with a note indicating at least one of those men had been killed in retaliation for the slaying of four Shiite doctors and a former Shiite official.
Al-Maliki said his security plan for Baghdad had been ratified and would soon be implemented, and he said another plan was in the works for the volatile province of Diyala.
"The security situation is complicated," he said, citing unspecified internal and foreign interference. "Yes the mission is hard and tough, but we have short and long-term plans to fight and defeat terrorists and ensure security."
"But the government and its security forces can't deal with this security situation alone and all the people have to back the security institutions," he added.
A major Sunni Arab political party, meanwhile, accused the Interior Ministry of trying to cover up police involvement in the raid in which gunmen wearing police uniforms descended upon bus stations in central Baghdad and began randomly grabbing people, including travelers, merchants and vendors selling tea and sandwiches.
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The Iraqi Islamic Party also appealed to Shiite and Sunni religious and political leaders to intervene directly to put an end to the violence.
Prominent Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi also appealed for the government and U.S.-led forces to take action against such attacks and urged the speedy appointment of the key Interior and Defense ministry posts.
"The killing operations have become a phenomena," he told reporters in Baghdad. "Fifty Iraqis have been abducted and the Iraqi officials have done nothing to stop those behind these terrorist acts."
"I call on the political blocs to expedite the appointments of the interior and defense ministers," he said. "It might reassure the Iraqi people and end these barbaric acts."
The Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry, which oversees the police and has been accused of backing militias in sectarian violence, denied its forces were behind Monday's kidnappings.
But the Sunni group said it was certain that Iraqi police carried out the abductions, although it did not provide specifics about its alleged evidence.
"The Iraqi police denied their involvement in this operation, despite the fact that it occurred in broad daylight ... and in central Baghdad," party member Alaa Maki said at a news conference. "But we now have enough evidence to prove the involvement of the Iraqi police in this incident."
The attack, the second such mass kidnapping in less than a month, was the latest in a series of setbacks for al-Maliki. The Shiite prime minister also has been frustrated in his efforts to crack down on sectarian and militia violence in the oil-rich southern city of Basra, where attacks have been unabated despite his declaration of a state of emergency on Wednesday.
And al-Maliki still has not been able to reach consensus among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian parties on candidates for interior and defense minister, posts he must fill to implement his ambitious plan to take control of Iraq's security from U.S.-led forces within 18 months.
The Bush administration hopes a unity government will drain support for the Sunni-led insurgency and restore order in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports new statistics from U.S. intelligence measure how much violence has surged. Attacks of all kinds are up 64 percent in the five months from January to May.
Violence, meanwhile, continued Tuesday, with a roadside bomb missing a U.S. military convoy in central Baghdad but killing a woman and wounding three other pedestrians, Lt. Thair Mahmoud said. The three-vehicle convoy was traveling near a busy bus station when the bomb detonated and sent gray smoke up in the air as the convoy kept moving.
Elsewhere in the capital, three local council workers were killed in a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad. Two mortar rounds also slammed into an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, killing two bystanders and wounding nine others, Lt. Ahmed Muhammad Ali said.
A decapitated body also was found Tuesday in Aziziyah, 35 miles southeast of Baghdad.