World

More Blasts In Iraq

March 4, 2004 / 8:57 AM EST / CBS/AP

Insurgents launched four mortars at the 4th Infantry Division's base in Tikrit late Wednesday, including one that landed just yards from the dining hall during supper time. No one was injured.

In Baghdad, five large explosions rumbled through the center of Baghdad late Wednesday, and sirens sounded from the green zone where the headquarters of the U.S.-led occupation authority is located.

The blasts, which happened in quick succession just after 8 p.m., came nearly two-and-a-half hours after two other explosions were heard. The latter blasts were followed by a siren and a warning in English to "take cover." An "all clear" was sounded about a half hour later.

The U.S. military press office said it had no information where the blasts occurred.

U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said Wednesday it was "increasingly apparent" that a large part of terrorism comes from outside Iraq and pledged to increase controls of Iraq's borders to prevent infiltrators from entering the country.

Bremer spoke a day after devastating suicide attacks and bombings at Shiite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala.

In other developments:

U.S. officials lowered their death toll in the attacks to 117 from 143, released late Tuesday. But the president of Iraq's Governing Council said the casualty toll was 271 dead and 393 injured.

Authorities say Iraqi police and U.S. troops detained 15 people, including four thought to be Iranian, in the attacks. U.S. officials and Iraqi leaders have named an al Qaeda-linked Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as a "prime suspect" for the attacks, saying he is seeking to spark a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq to wreck U.S. plans to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30.

A letter purported to come from al Qaeda denied responsibility for, blaming American troops instead — but it also called Shiites infidels. "The American troops have carried out a massacre to kill innocent Shiites in Karbala, their (Shiites') infidel city, and in Baghdad," said the letter, received on Wednesday via e-mail by the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper.

A draft constitution drawn up earlier this week by Iraq's leading politicians and the U.S.-led administration will be signed Friday, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council said.

Iraq apparently destroyed most of its known chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles years before the United States invaded last March, a report from United Nations inspectors claims.

Unless the United States addresses Middle East conflicts and restores stability in Iraq, Arabs cannot support the "Greater Middle East Initiative" proposed by the Bush administration, the head of the Arab League said Wednesday.

Japan's Foreign Ministry urged Japanese nationals visiting or living in Iraq to leave, a day after suicide attackers set off bombs in two Iraqi cities that killed at least 117 and wounded hundreds of others.

The Navy's top admiral says investigations in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad have found no evidence a missing Navy pilot was ever in Iraqi hands. Michael Speicher was shot down on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War. Stories have surfaced he was held in captivity after he crashed.

Tuesday's attacks fanned the Shiites fears and anger at a time when leaders of Iraq's Shiite majority are pressing for more power in a future government after years of oppression under Saddam Hussein's regime.

Those killed and wounded were observing the Ashoura holiday, which commemorates the 7th century martyrdom of the prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein, the event that triggered the schism between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Just two hours after Tuesday's attacks on Shiite pilgrims in Iraq, attackers in Quetta, Pakistan, sprayed gunfire and lobbed grenades into a solemn religious procession of Shiite Muslims, then blew themselves up as survivors scattered. At least 42 people died, and more than 160 were wounded.

Bremer said it was "increasingly apparent that a large part of this terrorism comes from outside the country."

"Tuesday showed us the dark vision of the evil doers. They fight to ward off harmony and are happy to pave the road to power with the corpses of their innocent victims," Bremer said. "The terrorists are dead set against the vision of a democratic Iraq, a vision shared by an overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people."

Some outraged Shiites lashed out Tuesday at U.S. forces. Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Hussein al-Sistani - who holds enormous influence among Shiites - blamed the Americans for not providing security.

Shiite leaders complained Wednesday that the U.S.-led coalition has failed to protect the country's porous borders and demanded more controls to prevent terrorists and criminals from moving in and out of Iraq with ease.

"There are 8,000 border police on duty today and more are on the way," Bremer said. "We are adding hundreds of vehicles and doubling border police staffing in selected areas. The United States has committed $60 million to support border security. These are practical measures and they will have an effect."

Earlier Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations, told reporters that a "mile high wall" around Iraq would not have been enough to have stopped Tuesday's attacks.