World

Kurdish Bridge Link To Baghdad Bombed

June 2, 2007 / 9:16 AM EDT / CBS/AP

From south and north, Iraq's Kurdish region felt pressure from two sides Saturday, as saboteurs bombed a vital bridge link to Baghdad, and Turkish troops across the border massed for a possible strike.

The attack appeared to be the latest by insurgents who have tried to cripple vital Iraqi supply arteries, including Tigris River bridges in Baghdad.

"We won't allow it to be turned into a battleground," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday of the relatively peaceful Iraqi north, a haven for anti-Turkish Kurdish guerrillas.

Al-Maliki promised that the national and the Kurdish leadership were united in refusing to let Iraq be used as a base to harm neighboring countries and urged the sides to resolve their problems peacefully.

"If there are some problems, we should not rely on weapons and threats, or use violence and power because this will increase tension and deepen problems," al-Maliki said during a joint news conference with the leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, in the regional capital of Irbil.

"Secondly, the Iraqi territory should be respected, and we will not allow it to become a battleground," he added. "As we don't want to harm neighboring countries, so we don't want the others to enter the Iraqi territory with a military incursion or fight of any kind."

The U.S.-backed Shiite leader also dismissed concerns that U.S. forces would stay in Iraq for 50 years following a White House comparison to the U.S. presence in South Korea.

"This is baseless because this matter is up to the Iraqi people and the government, and the Iraqi people did not make a decision yet, and discussion on this matter did not take place," al-Maliki said.

Turkey has been building up its military forces on the Iraqi border in recent weeks as political and military leaders debate whether to attack rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, who stage raids in southeast Turkey after crossing over from hideouts in Iraq.

Turkish commandos occasionally stage so-called "hot pursuits" of the rebels, who operate in small bands, carry little food and know fresh water sources in the region. Those pursuits are limited in time and scope.

Turks accuse Iraqi Kurds, who once fought alongside the Turkish soldiers against the PKK in Iraq, of supporting the separatist rebels and worry that the war in Iraq could lead to Iraq's disintegration and the creation of a Kurdish state in the north.

Turkey also is concerned that Iraqi Kurds' efforts to incorporate the oil-rich city of Kirkuk into their self-governing region in northern Iraq could embolden rebels seeking self-rule in southeast Turkey.

Both the United States and the Iraqi government oppose a Turkish cross-border offensive. Other officials in Baghdad have promised Turkey that they would prevent the PKK from launching attacks from the Iraqi territory but Turkey is growing increasingly impatient with their inability to rein in the rebels.

Such a confrontation between two U.S. allies could raise tensions between Turkey and the United States, which is struggling to stabilize the country and defeat an insurgency. U.S. commanders have not pursued the Kurdish rebels in remote mountain areas of northern Iraq, one of the few stable areas of the country.

Turkey already has more than 1,000 troops deployed mainly in the Sulaimaniyah area in northern Iraq, since the last major incursion a decade ago. The troops run several liaison offices in the region from where they collect intelligence and monitor rebel activities in the region. On Friday, Iraqi Kurds questioned some Turkish officers in civilian clothes at gunpoint, according to the Turkish military.

The Turkish military has warned that any action against its soldiers in Iraq would be "responded to at the highest level," after the incident in Sulaimaniyah.

In Other Developments:

The military says six U.S. troops were killed yesterday in five separate attacks. Since the Iraq war began in 2003, at least 3,485 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, according to an unofficial count by The Associated Press.

As U.S. jets roared overhead, Mahdi Army militiamen on Sunday battled with Iraqi troops and local police searching for two militia leaders in the southern city of Diwaniyah. At least three people were killed and 24 wounded, official Iraqi sources reported. The southern clashes came just hours after American helicopter gunships attacked targets in Mahdi Army-dominated Shiite east Baghdad, killing four suspected militants, the U.S. military reported, as the radical Shiite militia faced growing pressure to
bow to central government authority.

A parked car bomb struck an open-air market northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than two dozen, police said. The explosion occurred just after noon as the commercial area was packed with shoppers in Balad Ruz, police said, giving the casualty toll. Balad Ruz is a predominantly Shiite enclave in the volatile Diyala province that has recently faced a campaign of violence and intimidation by suspected Sunni insurgents.

At least eight people have been killed and 25 others wounded in a series of mortar barrages in Baghdad. The mortars rained down on a Sunni enclave in the Shiite-dominated area east of the Tigris River in the early morning hours today, and continued on-and-off for more than five hours. At least one woman and one child are among the dead.

In western Baghdad, a well-known Sunni cleric, Ali Khudir al-Zind, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he walked near his home, police said. Elsewhere in the city's western half, gunmen in two separate locations killed three people, and police found two bullet-riddled bodies of people who had been bound and blindfolded and showed signs of torture.

North of Baghdad, a Sunni tribal sheik and village mayor, Rokan Mutlak al-Jibouri, whose tribe is said to be opposed to the activities of al-Qaida in Iraq, was shot to death while leaving his home for work Saturday morning, Brig. Qadir said.

The kidnappers of five British citizens in Iraq have reportedly issued demands for their release. A senior Iraqi government source has told a British newspaper the victims are safe but will not be released unless their demands are met. The Sunday Times reports that representatives of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army want an end to British patrols in the southern city of Basra and for Britain to stop trying to kill the group's leaders. The militia also wants the release of nine Mahdi officials from British and American custody. The four private security workers and an IT consultant were kidnapped Tuesday from Iraq's finance ministry. Publicly, the Mahdi Army has denied any involvement in the abductions.