Suicide car bomb kills Iraq governing council head

9.00pm UPDATE

BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomb killed the head of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and at least eight other people on Monday at a checkpoint outside the main Baghdad headquarters of the US-led administration.

Abdul Zahra Othman Mohammad, a Shi'ite council member also known as Izzedin Salim, had been waiting at a checkpoint to enter the "Green Zone" compound in Baghdad when the bomb went off, Deputy Foreign Minister Hamed al-Bayati told Reuters.

"Izzedin Salim was martyred," he said.

The attack underlined the vulnerability of the US-backed administration just six weeks before the occupiers are set to return sovereignty to Iraqis, though Iraq's foreign minister insisted the violence would not derail the political process.

Bayati said Salim's car had been the last in a Governing Council convoy which included other council members, who were due to hold a meeting in the coalition compound, where the council has its headquarters.

"The other members escaped unharmed. They managed to get through the checkpoint before the explosion. Salim was still waiting to enter. It is too early to say whether the attack specifically targeted the Governing Council convoy," he said.

Salim, who was the current holder of the rotating Governing Council presidency, was the second of the 25-member Council to be killed. In September gunmen assassinated Aqila al-Hashemi, one of three women on the council.

The checkpoint had been crowded with civilian cars and minibuses when the bomb was detonated. More than a dozen vehicles were destroyed by the blast, which melted the asphalt of the road and covered it in pools of blood.

Doctors wearing masks and rubber gloves pulled burnt bodies from twisted wrecks of minibuses. Shoes and human remains were hurled through the air. A scorched foot hung from barbed wire 30m away. A large crater was blown in the road.

"There was a huge crowd at the checkpoint," said Raad Mukhlis, a security guard at a nearby residential compound.

"There were a lot of cars and people on foot standing there, and then this massive explosion. I saw body parts and martyrs everywhere."

Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, said the car bomber had been waiting in a queue of vehicles at the checkpoint.

"It is our understanding that it was a suicide car bomb," he told reporters at the scene, adding that two US soldiers were wounded in the blast.

Salim, from Iraq's Shi'ite majority, was the head of the Islamic Dawa Party in Basra and the editor of several newspapers and magazines. He was one of the nine council members who each hold the rotating presidency for a month at a time.

Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told reporters on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum in Jordan the attack would not stop preparations for the handover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.

"This shows our enemies are still there and will do anything to intimidate Iraqis to derail the political process," he said. "This will strengthen our resolve to continue the political process... This will not derail the process."

On May 6, a suicide bomber killed five Iraqis and a US soldier at an entrance to the Green Zone, a sprawling compound which used to be one of Saddam Hussein's palace complexes and now serves as headquarters for the US-led coalition in Iraq.

A statement purporting to be from a group headed by leading al Qaeda figure Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for that attack.

- REUTERS




Herald Feature: Iraq