Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
January 25, 2008
Pg. 10
By Solomon Moore
BAGHDAD — A provincial police chief was killed in a suicide bombing in west Mosul on Thursday as he toured the site of an insurgent bomb factory that exploded the day before as Iraqi Army soldiers tried to enter. Thirty-four people were killed and at least 224 were wounded in the initial blast.
Duraid Kashmola, the provincial governor, declared an emergency curfew after the Thursday attack, and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced that he was sending a team to investigate.
Witnesses said that survivors of Wednesday’s blast were still digging corpses out of the rubble when Brig. Gen. Saleh Ahmed al-Jabouri, Nineveh Province’s most senior law enforcement official, arrived at the site, in the impoverished Zanjeli district. An angry crowd quickly gathered.
“He was unprepared for how angry the people were,” said Alaa Faris, a porter who works in a market nearby. “They threw stones at him. At this point the police commander began to withdraw with his bodyguards to their vehicles.”
The crowd blamed the Iraqi security forces for causing the explosion at the factory, according to Staff Brig. Taha Ibrahim Mousa of the Mosul police, who was assisting in recovery efforts when the provincial chief arrived. Hisham al-Hamadani, head of the Nineveh provincial council, said Thursday that the explosion had damaged 100 homes.
“They were angry because their relatives were buried underneath the rubble of the buildings,” Brigadier Mousa said. The aggrieved mob swarmed around the chief’s group, he said. “As they were leaving the scene,” he said, “the suicide bomber came close to the police chief’s truck and blew up.”
One of General Jabouri’s bodyguards and a police officer died immediately, he said. Six civilians, including an Iraqi journalist, were wounded. General Jabouri was hit by shrapnel in the head and chest and died shortly after arriving at a Mosul hospital.
“This was a well-organized attack,” said Brig. Ibrahim al-Jabouri, the police chief of neighboring Tal Afar. Jabouri is a common tribal name in Iraq. “After the insurgents booby-trapped the building the day before, the Iraqi Army knew that someone important would come into the area,” he said.
A local police spokesman said that the attacker was wearing a police uniform, but Brigadier Mousa, who witnessed the attack, and Brigadier Jabouri said that was untrue. “It was a civilian,” Brigadier Mousa said. “He was dressed in civilian clothes, wearing jeans.”
American military commanders say that Nineveh is the only province where security has not improved since the start of the American troop increase a year ago. The polyglot city of Mosul, about 225 miles north of the capital, is Iraq’s third largest city and has been buffeted by sectarian violence since the 2003 American-led invasion. Mosul fell to retrenching Sunni insurgents after the American siege of Falluja in 2004, and despite some improvement, it has remained a problem.
But Brigadier Jabouri said that security forces in Nineveh were making progress, conducting operations against the insurgency, opening roads that had long been too dangerous to travel, and securing many neighborhoods.
“People are starting to live normal lives again,” he said.
Brig. Gen. David D. Phillips of the United States Army, the director of the American-led Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, said the police general’s death was “very regrettable,” but would not significantly affect law enforcement in Nineveh.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Thursday, a top representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most revered cleric, was lightly wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy in Karbala. The representative, Sheik Abdul Mehdi al-Karbilai, the chief cleric of the Shrine of Imam Hussein, an important religious landmark for the Shiite community, survived with minor wounds. Two of his bodyguards were killed and two wounded.
The bomb exploded as Sheik Karbilai’s convoy was driving him from the shrine to his home in the Jamiya district. The attack was at least the fourth attempt on his life since 2003.
An improvised bomb exploded near a police convoy in Baghdad, killing two officers and wounding three other people. And the police in Baquba discovered a body. The victim appeared to have been shot to death, they said.
Reporting was contributed by Mudhafer al-Husaini, Abeer Mohammed and Qais Mizher from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul, Baghdad and Baquba.
January 25, 2008
Pg. 10
By Solomon Moore
BAGHDAD — A provincial police chief was killed in a suicide bombing in west Mosul on Thursday as he toured the site of an insurgent bomb factory that exploded the day before as Iraqi Army soldiers tried to enter. Thirty-four people were killed and at least 224 were wounded in the initial blast.
Duraid Kashmola, the provincial governor, declared an emergency curfew after the Thursday attack, and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced that he was sending a team to investigate.
Witnesses said that survivors of Wednesday’s blast were still digging corpses out of the rubble when Brig. Gen. Saleh Ahmed al-Jabouri, Nineveh Province’s most senior law enforcement official, arrived at the site, in the impoverished Zanjeli district. An angry crowd quickly gathered.
“He was unprepared for how angry the people were,” said Alaa Faris, a porter who works in a market nearby. “They threw stones at him. At this point the police commander began to withdraw with his bodyguards to their vehicles.”
The crowd blamed the Iraqi security forces for causing the explosion at the factory, according to Staff Brig. Taha Ibrahim Mousa of the Mosul police, who was assisting in recovery efforts when the provincial chief arrived. Hisham al-Hamadani, head of the Nineveh provincial council, said Thursday that the explosion had damaged 100 homes.
“They were angry because their relatives were buried underneath the rubble of the buildings,” Brigadier Mousa said. The aggrieved mob swarmed around the chief’s group, he said. “As they were leaving the scene,” he said, “the suicide bomber came close to the police chief’s truck and blew up.”
One of General Jabouri’s bodyguards and a police officer died immediately, he said. Six civilians, including an Iraqi journalist, were wounded. General Jabouri was hit by shrapnel in the head and chest and died shortly after arriving at a Mosul hospital.
“This was a well-organized attack,” said Brig. Ibrahim al-Jabouri, the police chief of neighboring Tal Afar. Jabouri is a common tribal name in Iraq. “After the insurgents booby-trapped the building the day before, the Iraqi Army knew that someone important would come into the area,” he said.
A local police spokesman said that the attacker was wearing a police uniform, but Brigadier Mousa, who witnessed the attack, and Brigadier Jabouri said that was untrue. “It was a civilian,” Brigadier Mousa said. “He was dressed in civilian clothes, wearing jeans.”
American military commanders say that Nineveh is the only province where security has not improved since the start of the American troop increase a year ago. The polyglot city of Mosul, about 225 miles north of the capital, is Iraq’s third largest city and has been buffeted by sectarian violence since the 2003 American-led invasion. Mosul fell to retrenching Sunni insurgents after the American siege of Falluja in 2004, and despite some improvement, it has remained a problem.
But Brigadier Jabouri said that security forces in Nineveh were making progress, conducting operations against the insurgency, opening roads that had long been too dangerous to travel, and securing many neighborhoods.
“People are starting to live normal lives again,” he said.
Brig. Gen. David D. Phillips of the United States Army, the director of the American-led Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, said the police general’s death was “very regrettable,” but would not significantly affect law enforcement in Nineveh.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Thursday, a top representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most revered cleric, was lightly wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy in Karbala. The representative, Sheik Abdul Mehdi al-Karbilai, the chief cleric of the Shrine of Imam Hussein, an important religious landmark for the Shiite community, survived with minor wounds. Two of his bodyguards were killed and two wounded.
The bomb exploded as Sheik Karbilai’s convoy was driving him from the shrine to his home in the Jamiya district. The attack was at least the fourth attempt on his life since 2003.
An improvised bomb exploded near a police convoy in Baghdad, killing two officers and wounding three other people. And the police in Baquba discovered a body. The victim appeared to have been shot to death, they said.
Reporting was contributed by Mudhafer al-Husaini, Abeer Mohammed and Qais Mizher from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul, Baghdad and Baquba.