Rebels set sights on Allawi

Rebels say they downed a helicopter. Picture / Reuters

Iraq was engulfed in a fresh wave of violence when insurgents shot down a helicopter killing 11 people, and al Qaeda in Iraq claimed one of its suicide bombers had come close to assassinating the Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

The MI-8 commercial helicopter contracted to the US Defence Department was hit by a ground-to-air missile 40km north of Baghdad yesterday. All on board were killed: six Americans, two bodyguards from the Philippines and the three-man Bulgarian crew.

An Iraqi insurgent group said it shot down the helicopter and then killed the only survivor, according to a statement and video posted on the internet.

"One of the crew members was captured alive and killed," the Islamic army in Iraq said in the internet statement.

It posted a video of what appeared to be burning remains of the helicopter.

A man in blue overalls was shown lying in a grassy area and reaching out for help. "Give me a hand," he was heard saying.

Off-camera insurgents ordered him to walk away before shooting him repeatedly to the cry of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest).

"The heroes of the Islamic army in Iraq shot down a transport plane of the army of atheism," said the statement, posted on a website often used by Iraqi rebels.

In January, nine RAF flight crew and a soldier died when a C-130 Hercules was downed, almost certainly by a ground-to-air missile, also north of Baghdad.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has no real connection with the al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, claimed in an internet statement that a pick-up truck packed with TNT and mortar rounds rammed Allawi's convoy close to the Green Zone in Baghdad. When his guards opened fire the bomber blew himself up, killing one policeman and wounding four.

Despite the violence, disagreements are still delaying formation of an Iraqi government almost three months after the election, heralded at the time as a turning point for Iraq.

Nechervan Barzani, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said the delay was because of Allawi. The Kurds want his party on board as a counter-balance to the Shia coalition, but he wants four ministerial posts and has been offered only two.

Fresh assaults by insurgents are denting Iraqi Government and American optimism that the rate of attacks may be ebbing. US casualties are down but there were 20 car-bombings in Baghdad in the past week.

A roadside bomb on the airport road - the most notoriously dangerous highway in Iraq - hit a convoy of foreign security men on Thursday killing two of them. Three other security men were killed nearby on Wednesday and two US soldiers the day before.

Also yesterday, the defence ministry in Baghdad identified 19 bullet-ridden bodies found against a wall in a sports stadium in Haditha, a Sunni city.

Officials said they were not soldiers or police as local people thought, but men from southern Diwaniya and Najaf provinces who had gone fishing in Tharthar lake.

If this is true, the dead were almost certainly Shia.

Bloody glimpse of ruthless enemy

If Iraq's new leaders want to know just how ruthless their insurgent enemies are, a soccer stadium in the town of Haditha offers a bloody glimpse of what they are up against.

Witnesses said they believed guerrillas shot and killed 19 men there in broad daylight on Wednesday in what looked like a cold-blooded execution.

Footage of the deaths filmed by guerrillas and broadcast by news organisations showed the blindfolded men, dressed in civilian clothes, lying in the dirt, their hands bound behind their backs with rope.

Judging by the bullet holes in a dirt wall beside the corpses, they were lined up and shot by a guerrilla firing squad.

At one point, the guerrilla who filmed the bodies focused on one man with a pool of blood under his head.

It soon became apparent why as the lens moved closer. He was still breathing.

Witnesses told a Reuters cameraman the insurgents had told them they were going to kill the men because they were security forces. A Defence Ministry official insisted the victims were all fishermen.

The truth may never be known because disinformation has been rife amid the jockeying for position by rival parties since Iraq's historic elections nearly three months ago.

Whoever the dead men were, their killings were yet another blow to Iraqis' hopes the January 30 polls would bring an early end to relentless suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.

They left no doubt that insurgents are capable of moving into towns such as Haditha, a typically impoverished town 200km northwest of Baghdad, rounding up large numbers of people and killing them, apparently without resistance.

Such bloodshed is not unusual in Iraq. Insurgents have previously dragged 49 Iraqi soldiers off a bus on a remote road and shot them in the head execution-style. Single suicide bombings have killed more than 100 people more than once.

- REUTERS and INDEPENDENT