Jordan Times
Thursday, March 9, 2006
Jordan will intensify
contacts to contain Samarra attack fallout
Agencies
KING ABDULLAH ON Wednesday said Jordan will
intensify contacts with countries in the region as well as multinational forces
to contain the repercussions of last month's bombing of a major Shiite shrine in
Samarra.
King Abdullah was quoted by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, as telling President
of the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front Adnan Dulaimi and his delegation that Sunnis,
Shiites and Kurds should not be dragged into sectarian fighting.
The King warned against attempts to exploit the crisis, which was aggravated
after the bombing.
Dulaimi, for his part, said he appreciated King Abdullah's call on Iraqi
religious leaders to meet in Amman for reconciliation talks.
Bodies garrotted, Iraq minister escapes bomb
The bodies of 18 men, bound, blindfolded and strangled, were found in a Sunni
Arab district of Baghdad, apparent victims of sectarian turmoil gripping Iraq
and threatening the formation of a coalition government.
Iraq's Shiite interior minister, a hate figure for many Sunnis who accuse him of
condoning death squads, escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a
roadside bomb blasted his convoy. Minister Bayan Jabor, however, was not in his
car.
In its annual report on human rights abuses worldwide, the US State Department
said reports increased in 2005 of killings by the US-backed Iraqi government or
its agents and members of sectarian militias dominated many police units.
"Police abuses included threats, intimidation, beatings, and suspension by the
arms or legs, as well as the reported use of electric drills and cords and the
application of electric shocks," the State Department said of Iraqi human rights
three years after US troops invaded to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
About 50 Iraqi private security guards were seized at their compound by men in
police uniform on Wednesday — but interior ministry officials said they were
unaware of any formal arrests.
The bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra on February 22 has pitched
Iraq towards civil war, unleashing reprisal sectarian killings and deepening the
mutual suspicion between the country's majority Shiite Muslims and minority
Sunnis.
The violence has complicated faltering efforts to form a government of national
unity three months after elections. Iraqi leaders, struggling to agree on who
should hold the top posts, are due to meet President Jalal Talabani on Thursday
to decide on a way forward. Parliament is supposed to meet by Sunday.
The dumping of bodies bearing signs of torture and killed execution-style is a
feature of the violence.
The 18 bodies discovered by US troops in western Baghdad late Tuesday had all
been garrotted and had their hands bound with plastic ties, police and hospital
officials said.
The victims, a mixture of middle-aged and young men in civilian clothes, carried
no identifying papers, police said.
A policeman at the Yarmuk Hospital morgue pointed to their clothing and long
hair as an indication some may have been religious extremists linked to Al
Qaeda. Reuters reporters who saw the bodies said many appeared to be Iraqis.
Police sources said only one had so far been identified by a relative. He was a
guard at an oil refinery in southern Baghdad.
The policeman at the hospital said many of the bloodied bodies appeared to have
been beaten while some had small burn marks, suggesting they were tortured
before being killed.
Senior officials, aware of the potential for sectarian anger if it becomes clear
all are either Sunni or Shiite Muslims, made no formal comment on the religious
identities of the dead.
Iraqi police said the bodies were dumped near the Amriya district, a stronghold
of Sunni insurgent groups.
Minister's convoy attacked
Sunnis have accused the Shiite-led government's police and other security forces
of abducting and killing Sunni civilians — an accusation Interior Minister Jabor
and the police deny.
Interior ministry vehicles normally used to transport Jabor and his aides were
attacked as they left the ministry on Wednesday. A roadside bomb destroyed one
car in the convoy, killing two and wounding five, a police source told Reuters.
It follows the assassination of the top Iraqi general in Baghdad, a Sunni, by a
sniper in the capital on Monday.
The US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, described Major General Mubdar
Hatim Dulaimi at his funeral as "a courageous soldier, a passionate leader and
an Iraqi hero."
More than 500 people have been killed since the Samarra bombings, according to
the most conservative official figures.
Despite the daily bombings and shootings there is a relative lull in the
violence and officials have said the immediate crisis seems to be over — for the
time being at least.
But the US ambassador conceded on Tuesday Iraq could still descend into civil
war, saying Americans "opened Pandora's Box" when they toppled Saddam in 2003
and another incident like that in Samarra could push it to the brink of war
again.
Eight people, including four policemen were killed in bombings in Baghdad and
the western town of Fallujah on Wednesday. The bodies of two people were found
bound and blindfold and shot dead in eastern Baghdad, police said.
In political negotiations, Sunni and Kurdish parties refuse to accept Shiite
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari should stay on. His critics say he has failed to
bring security or prosperity during the year in which he has been interim prime
minister.