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US bombs suspected insurgent hideout
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-04 08:53
U.S. aircraft bombed a building where suspected insurgents were hiding north
of Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding four, Iraqi police said Tuesday.
The bombing took place late Monday in Beiji, site of Iraq's largest oil
refinery, said Iraqi police Capt. Arkan Jassim, who reported the casualty
figures.
The U.S. military did not comment on the deaths. It said only that an
unmanned aircraft spotted three men planting a roadside bomb in the city 155
miles north of Baghdad, and that Navy F-14s bombed a nearby building the three
had entered.
AP Television News video showed dozens of people gathered Tuesday near the
rubble of the building. Men carried several bodies wrapped in carpets from the
rubble, chanting, "There is no God but God!"
Iraqis search for the bodies of victims of an
alleged U.S. airstrike in Beiji, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of
Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Jan. 3, 2005.[AP] | The Beiji refinery stopped production Dec. 18 because tanker truck drivers
refused to make deliveries across dangerous desert roads. Iraqi officials said
Monday that the refinery resumed supplying Baghdad and other cities after taking
security precautions for drivers.
In northeastern Baghdad, the sister of Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr was
kidnapped Tuesday by gunmen who killed one of her bodyguards and seriously
wounded another, said Adnan Thabet, commander of the Interior Ministry's special
forces.
He did not provide any other details about the kidnapping or the minister's
sister — including her name or age.
Jabr is a member of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq —
the country's largest Shiite party, also known as SCIRI. He was formerly a
senior official of the Badr Brigade, a militia that belongs to SCIRI.
Jabr has in recent weeks been the focus of criticism over allegations of
torture and abuse at Interior Ministry prisons. Many of the those abused were
Sunnis, the group thought to fuel the insurgency.
Also Tuesday, the nephew of Maj. Gen. Ali Al-Yasiri, commander of the Baghdad
rescue police, was kidnapped, Hussein said.
In other violence, eight people were killed Tuesday in three attacks in
Baghdad.
Gunmen attacked a car carrying construction workers in a western
neighborhood, killing three, police Capt. Qasim Hussein said. Another car
carrying civilians was fired on in the same area, killing two people, said
police 1st Lt. Thair Mahmoud. Three civilians elsewhere in Baghdad were shot to
death, police said.
Meanwhile, an international team began reviewing the hundreds of complaints
filed over Iraq's parliamentary elections, and an Iraqi elections official said
Tuesday that results might not be ready for two more weeks.
The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq has completed its investigation
of almost 2,000 election complaints and will announce the findings Wednesday,
commission member Hussein Hindawi told The Associated Press.
But the commission won't announce final election results until an
international team finishes its work, meaning they might not be ready for two
weeks, said commission member Safwat Rashid. Officials previously said final
results of the Dec. 15 vote would be announced in early January.
The commission investigated 1,980 complaints, including 50 that were
considered serious enough to alter results in some districts, an election
official said.
The international team, which began its work Monday, agreed to review Iraq's
elections after protests by Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups that the polls
were tainted with fraud.
Preliminary results give the governing Shiite religious bloc, the United
Iraqi Alliance, a big lead, but one that would still require forming a coalition
with other groups.
Members of the International Mission for Iraqi Elections were in Baghdad to
investigate fraud complaints, verify vote counts and review the decision by
Iraq's election commission to remove 90 people from Saddam Hussein's outlawed
Baath party from the tickets of political parties, Rashid said. It wasn't known
how many of the 2,000 complaints the team would investigate.
The Iraqi election commission, which is separate from the international team,
will study the international team's findings before it announces final results
of the Dec. 15 elections, Rashid said.
"If they work hard they might finish within a week," he said.
It took about two weeks to announce final results from interim parliamentary
elections on Jan. 30, 2005.
In other developments:
- Oil Minister Ahmad Chalabi met with coalition officials to discuss
ways to bring the oil refinery in Beiji — Iraq's largest — back on line after it
stopped production Dec. 18 because tanker truck drivers refused to make
deliveries across dangerous desert roads. Chalabi said recent attacks on the
country's oil pipelines make it clear that insurgents are trying to prevent the
refinery from operating.
- The satellite news channel Al-Arabiya showed footage of Jordanian
hostage Mahmoud Suleiman Saidat. His captors said they had given Jordan's
government more time to meet demands that it cut ties with the Baghdad
government and free a female would-be suicide bomber whose explosives belt
failed to go off during Nov. 9 attacks that killed 60 people in
Amman.
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