Bombings in Iraq Hit Two Dangerous Regions

Bombings in Iraq Hit Two Dangerous Regions
By Anthony Shadid and K.I. Ibrahim
Copyright by The Washington Post
Monday, March 23, 2009; 2:44 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032300392.html?hpid=topnews


BAGHDAD, March 23 -- Blasts hit in two of Iraq's most dangerous regions Monday, killing as many as 34 people, in the third day of devastating attacks this month.

The bombings came on a day that Iraq's government touted as another step in the restoration of a semblance of normalcy to Baghdad. The capital bristled with security for the arrival of Turkey's president, the first visit by a Turkish head of state in 30 years.

U.S. officials have said attacks like Monday's reflect desperation by insurgents, and they cite numbers that show violence has dropped to levels not seen since 2003. But hundreds of Iraqis still die every month, and there is anxiety, often voiced, that violence may escalate as the U.S. military withdraws, particularly in more dangerous regions.

The highest toll came when a bomber blew himself up inside a crowded tent at a funeral for the brother of a Kurdish official in Jalawla, in the fertile province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad. The province runs along Iran's border.

Interior Ministry officials said 25 people were killed and 45 wounded, many of them mourners paying their condolences. Local police said 20 people were killed and 44 wounded.

Witnesses, reached by telephone, said the suicide bomber set off his explosives after the evening prayers, sending a fireball through the canvas of the tent and igniting a fire. By nightfall, nothing was left save the tent's metal scaffolding, and chairs littered the ground. Witnesses said survivors carried out the dead and wounded, who screamed in pain.

"We went inside the tent, and just a moment later, I heard a huge explosion and everything went black," said Riyadh Kamil al-Qaisi, 34, who was brought to the hospital in Jalawla with wounds to his right leg and face. "I didn't know what happened next."

Snared in a still-resilient insurgency, Diyala remains one of Iraq's most precarious regions. Its Sunni Arab majority numbers 55 percent and perhaps far more. Shiites are the second largest group, comprising possibly a third of the population, with a sizable Kurdish minority toward the province's northern end, near Jalawla, a town that has suffered repeated attacks.

The sectarian and ethnic fault lines are even more complicated in Jalawla, where its Kurdish inhabitants are both Sunni and Shiite, while most of its Arab residents are Sunni. Arabs there have bristled at what they view as Kurdish territorial ambitions in the region around Khanaqin, and insurgents still wield influence across the province.

The funeral was for the brother of Khalil Abbas Khudadat, an official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, officials said.

Ibrahim Hassan Bajilan, a member of Diyala provincial council and official with Talabani's party, said the majority of the killed and wounded were from his party.

The funeral was held in the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Shuhada, where Khudadat lived. Until last year, the area was partially under the control of Kurdish forces, but since then, Iraqi police and military have exerted full authority over the town.

The insurgency has persisted in both Diyala and the northern city of Mosul, and police in the region west of Baghdad have warned attacks may be escalating there, too.

Police also said a powerful blast Monday tore through a house in Haswa, 15 miles east of Fallujah, once an insurgent stronghold, killing nine people. Hospital officials said eight people were wounded. The Interior Ministry put the number of injured at 23.

Police said the blast targeted Emad and Ayad al-Halbousi, brothers who have served as leaders of Sahwa, Arabic for Awakening, a tribal gathering also known as the Sons of Iraq that helped defeat insurgents in Sunni regions with U.S. support.

The family of Ayad al-Halbousi discovered an explosive planted outside the house Monday morning, said Mohammed al-Zawbae, a major with the police in Haswa. The family alerted police, who came to disarm it. As the family and neighbors waited outside in the street, another explosive tore through the brother's house before noon, he said.

Both brothers were killed, along with three of their children, said Khalil al-Dulaimi, a doctor at Abu Ghraib Hospital, near the town.

"We were at home when the police came and asked us to evacuate it to dismantle the explosives," said Latifa Annad, a 50-year-old neighbor who had taken her children to a relative's house, down the street, while the bomb was disarmed. "Then the explosion happened. I was wounded by flying glass." She said she lost her hearing in the blast.

It was the second attack in that region this month. On March 10, a suicide bomber targeting tribal leaders and security officials who had gathered for a reconciliation conference killed 33 people in a ramshackle vegetable market near the municipal office.

Three days before, an assailant on a motorcycle plowed into a crowd outside of the police academy in a fortified part of Baghdad, killing 28 people.

Police in Abu Ghraib have warned that the release of scores of prisoners from the U.S-run facility in Camp Bucca in southern Iraq has made parts of Baghdad and the region west of it more dangerous. They point to their own arrests and the confiscation of insurgent leaflets warning Sahwa leaders to rejoin the insurgency or face retaliation.

Interior Ministry officials said a car bomb detonated Monday in Tal Afar, 50 miles west of Mosul, targeting a police patrol. One policeman was killed.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul was welcomed at Baghdad International Airport by Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and other officials in a visit that included talks with Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Turkey has pressed Baghdad and the government that runs the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq to stop Kurdish rebels from launching attacks on Turkey from bases in Iraq. Those rebels have been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984, in a bloody struggle that has killed tens of thousands of people.

In a news conference, Talabani said those rebels, loyal to a group known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, would have to end their fight from Iraq.

"Either they will lay down arms, or they will leave our territory," he said.

Iraq wants Turkey to allow more water to flow through dams along the Tigris River, an issue of tremendous importance for the largely desert country.

Correspondent Qais Mizer and special correspondents from Abu Ghraib and Baqubah contributed to this report.