30 killed in Iraq violence
Pakistan Times Wire Service

BAGHDAD (Iraq): Insurgents killed 26 people on Thursday in a string of attacks across Iraq, capping a bloody week that has left some 250 dead since the country’s new leaders unveiled the first democratically-elected government in half a century.

In the latest violence, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside an army recruiting post at the former Muthanna airport in the centre of Baghdad, killing 13 and wounding 15, an interior ministry official said. Insurgents in southern and eastern Baghdad neighbourhoods rained gunfire on police vehicles in two separate attacks, killing eight policemen and setting several patrol cars ablaze.

Four Iraqi commandos from the crack "Lightning Brigade" were killed and five wounded late in the day, when a suicide bomber detonated a car laden with explosives next to their patrol in Mosul, police said. A guard was also killed in a car bomb attack against the home of a senior defence ministry official.

As Iraq’s fledgling security forces were being targeted across the country, the government struck back, announcing the arrest of a former official of Saddam Hussein’s now-defunct Baath party in Mosul on suspicion of masterminding a string of insurgent attacks.

Earlier, lawmakers from al-Jaafari’s United Iraqi Alliance said there was agreement on who would fill the key oil and electricity slots, which are destined for Shias. Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, the first oil minister in the former US-appointed Governing Council, will return to the position, said Ali al-Dabagh, a Shia lawmaker involved in the negotiations.

A US Marine who was videotaped shooting to death a wounded unarmed Iraqi inside a mosque during an attack on Fallujah last year has been cleared of any wrongdoing after investigators determined that he acted in self-defence, the Marine Corps said.

Major General Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, ruled that the unidentified Marine corporal would not face court martial because he fired his weapon in self-defence.

US forces searched a hospital in central Iraq after receiving a tip from an informant about possible terrorist activities there related to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an official said. No insurgents were found during last week’s search of the hospital in Ramadi, said Lt Col Steven Boylan, a spokesman for US forces in Iraq.●