Bombers penetrate Green Zone

Bombers in Baghdad took the war to the very heart of United States power in Iraq yesterday with two blasts inside the supposedly impregnable Green Zone, killing five civilians, including three US nationals, and injuring at least 20.

The suicide attacks in the most protected 10 sq km in the country, where the US and British embassies and Iraq's interim government are based, is viewed as a huge propaganda boost for the insurgents.

Tawhid and Jihad, a group led by the Jordanian militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility.

Earlier in the day an American soldier was killed and two others injured in a roadside blast in Baghdad.

The Green Zone bombs had been carried in by hand, despite a security regime that included repeated stop-and-searches.

One of the blasts came at the same Green Zone cafe where an explosive device was found and defused only last week.

Western military sources said the bombs were likely to have been brought inside the area in parts and then assembled.

The area had come under mortar attacks in the past. But this was the first time the militants had succeeded in carrying out an attack with so many casualties.

It came on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is expected to see an upsurge in the number of attacks similar to the same time last year.

The first bomb exploded just after 1pm at a mock souk in the heavily fortified compound.

A second explosion at the cafe, popular with off-duty soldiers and Western civilians, came five minutes later and claimed more casualties.

"People were screaming. I was on the floor," said Mohammed "Mo" Nawaf al-Obeidi, 25, owner of the nearby Mo's Restaurant, who was at the cafe.

"People were stampeding, trying to get out," he said, his right hand bandaged.

At the cafe, an orange metal-framed tent built on to a former petrol station, the area was littered with glass, twisted metal, blood and food. Pieces of flesh were lying up to 15m away.

The "sanitised" area is ringed by high reinforced concrete blast walls, US soldiers in sandbagged positions and armoured cars at vantage points. Inside it is a slice of Middle America in Baghdad with joggers along the tree-lined avenues, a mall, a bazaar and cafes and restaurants catering to Western tastes.

But around 10,000 Iraqis live inside the zone and hundreds more come in every day to work for the Americans, the British and the interim government.

A military source said: "The Americans seem to need a vast service industry to look after them and this was bound to happen sooner or later.

"There are varying grades of passes and the Iraqi day workers have a red one which means extra diligence should be used with them.

"But, frankly, the searches are not particularly thorough. The other problem is that there is next to no vetting before these people are employed."

"It's definitely getting riskier," a British official who lives and works in the zone said last week. "Sometimes it feels like you're living on a firing range, or on a really well-defended but dangerous housing estate."

Underlining the seriousness of the deteriorating security situation, Iraq's interim President, Ghazi al-Yawer, said elections projected for January might not take place.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and President George W. Bush had both insisted that it was vital for the credibility of the Iraqi political process for the polls to take place.

But al-Yawar said: "It is scheduled for January 31, but that date is not sacred. If we see that elections held by that date without security or conditions favouring a fair and comprehensive vote, and that in turn will have a negative impact on our country, then we will not hesitate to change that date."

He stressed that elections in parts of the country deemed safe, an idea mooted by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was not acceptable.

"We will not abandon the rule of law or the need for the participation of all Iraqi cities in the election," he said.

The President, a Sunni, denied he was in dispute with Allawi, a Shia, but said, "sometimes, we have differences in our views".

US warplanes launched sustained and fierce attacks on the rebel-held Iraqi town of Falluja yesterday, witnesses said.

Explosions could be heard in the attacks, a day after Allawi warned the town would face an offensive unless it handed over al-Zarqawi and his followers.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

US warplanes have been attacking suspected guerrilla positions in Falluja every night in a bid to root out militants.

Residents said yesterday's bombing, which follows the breakdown of talks between the interim administration and representatives of the city's 300,000 residents, was much fiercer than previous operations. Witnesses said helicopters were also attacking parts of the town, which the government hopes to capture before elections.

At least five people, including a 13-year-old boy, died in a series of earlier strikes on Falluja.

Locals said they had no evidence that Zarqawi was there. "Where is this Zarqawi that Allawi is talking about? Let him come and show us where Zarqawi is," yelled one furious resident standing in the debris after the bombing. "These are homes."

Elsewhere more Iraqi civilians were killed, including a woman journalist and a judge who were shot dead by gunmen in separate attacks in Baghdad.

In the northern city of Mosul, a roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded six Iraqi National Guards.

Two senior Iraqi Army officers were shot dead in Baquba, north of the capital, a colleague said, and police in Kirkuk said they had found the beheaded body of a man believed to have been working for US-led forces.

Gunmen kidnapped two Turkish and two Iraqi truck drivers in separate ambushes near Samarra, police said. An Iraqi militant group said it had beheaded a kidnapped Turkish driver for co-operating "with the occupying Crusaders".

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq