Michael Howard in Kirkuk
Tuesday February 24, 2004
The Guardian
A suicide car bomb attack at a police station in Kirkuk yesterday killed at least 10 people and wounded 45 others. The attack raised fears for the fragile peace which has held in the oil-rich, northern Iraqi city since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
The blast was the latest in a wave of suicide and car bomb attacks which have targeted the poorly equipped Iraqi security forces and those deemed to be collaborating with the US-led coalition. More than 270 Iraqis have died in such attacks this year.
The bombing occurred during the fourth visit to Baghdad by the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to assess whether Iraqi security forces can take over more responsibilities from the United States after a handover of power on June 30.
Mr Rumsfeld told the Iraqi television station al-Iraqiya: "My impression is that on each one of my many trips to Iraq I see improvements each time ... Every week, the number of Iraqis who are participating in the security forces is growing."
The Kirkuk bomber struck shortly after 8am at a police station in the Rahimawa district in the north of the city. The area has a population of about 750,000 Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomans.
The police station, one of the largest and busiest in the city, was lightly guarded and had no fortifications.
A group of policemen was outside, ready to start work, when the bomber struck. The previous night had seen the first snow in Kirkuk for some years and some of the officers were throwing snowballs at each other.
Witnesses said that a white Oldsmobile saloon left the main road and drove up to the front of the station compound, which is next to a secondary school.
Ibrahim Noureddine, 17, a police recruit, was sitting on a wall 30 metres (100ft) away.
He said: "I saw a white car passing me, driving slowly. There was nothing strange, just that I saw that the driver had a shaven head. He drove slowly up to where my colleagues were, stopped and then detonated the bomb."
Those standing nearby were killed instantly, and shrapnel flew in all directions. Four students entering the school next door were seriously injured, and 18 vehicles were destroyed.
A US military rapid reaction team arrived at the scene 45 minutes after the blast.
A spokesman for the 25th Infantry Division said: "We are making no assumptions as to who is responsible for this. The Iraqi authorities are in charge of the investigations."
He said he was not aware of "heightened activity by insurgents" in Kirkuk, but that "terrorism remained a constant threat".
Major Sherzad Marouf, the senior officer at the station, said the bomber had delivered "a lethal terrorist package of 500kg [1,100lbs] of TNT and mortar rounds".
The wreckage of the Oldsmobile's steering column lay in the front garden of the station. Among the metal and wires was a human leg. In the back yard behind the building, lying in a reddened patch of snow, was a hand.
The station did not appear to have been structurally damaged by the blast but the windows were blown in and flying glass wounded at least 20 officers inside. The walls and floors were smeared with blood and hair.
Community leaders appealed for calm as bystanders, many of them Kurds, blamed either Sunni Arabs or Turkomans. Kirkuk's Kurdish population has been edgy since two suicide bombers killed 109 people at the offices of two Kurdish political party offices in Irbil, an hour's drive away, on February 4.
Kirkuk is claimed by the Kurds as their future capital but this is contested by many Turkomans and Arabs.
"It is trap by our enemies," said Nawazad Ahmad, a carpenter. "They want to stir up our people to fight, to lead us into a trap so that we will be beaten over Kirkuk by Ankara and the Arab nationalists."
But Kurdish intelligence officers working in the city have reported recent activity by Iraqi and foreign Islamists who they believe are connected to Ansar al-Islam or its offshoot, Ansar al-Sunna -the latter having claimed responsibility for the Irbil attacks.
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, said yesterday that elections in Iraq could not take place until late this year or early next year, depending on whether Iraqis enact an election law, among other things.
In a report to the security council, Mr Annan said elections could be held by the end of 2004 if preparations for a "legal and institutional framework" began immediately. But he said it was more likely that polling could not take place until 2005.
The report was issued after the visit to Iraq, earlier this month, of an electoral team headed by his senior adviser Lakhdar Brahimi.
Mr Annan said that the handover of political power should take place as the US wanted, on June 30, but he did not recommend how Iraq would select a provisional government. UN officials said it was likely Mr Brahimi would go to Iraq again next month and would help mediate a formula if the Iraqis and the coalition did not produce one.