The Hindu : International : Violence returns to Iraq after brief election lull

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 04, 2005

International

International

Violence returns to Iraq after brief election lull

By Atul Aneja

MANAMA, FEB. 3. After a brief lull following elections on Sunday, a series of violent incidents have rocked Iraq, including the ambush of 12 Iraqi soldiers near the northern oil city of Kirkuk. Five gunmen stopped a bus ferrying Iraqi troops who were returning from holiday late on Wednesday and shot 12 of them dead.

Two soldiers survived and fled to a nearby village. Resistance fighters also killed two U.S. marines in the Anbar province, which includes the restive towns of Ramadi and Falluja. In related incidents, guerillas killed an Iraqi and injured four of his colleagues who were on their way to an American military base in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.

Two civilians died and six were wounded in misdirected mortar attack on a U.S. military base of Tal Afar, in the direction of the Syrian border.

Bid on Governor's life

Besides, the Governor of Anbar province escaped assassination when a roadside bomb exploded near his car in Ramadi. Occupants of the car escaped injury but a woman bystander was injured when bodyguards of Fassal Namrawi opened fire after the blast. The surge in violence follows a declaration by an influential body of clerics that Sunday's elections, which the Sunnis, Iraq's second largest community, boycotted, were not legitimate.

The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), in a statement on Wednesday said, "The coming National Assembly and Government that will emerge will not possess the legitimacy to enable them to draft the Constitution or sign security or economic agreements."

The group warned "the United Nations and the international community of the danger of granting these elections legitimacy because this will open a door of evil."

Simultaneously, the Al-Qaeda condemned the elections and advocated a religious war in order to reform the Islamic world.

A written statement, said to have been the transcript of an audio recording of a speech by the Al-Qaeda's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned that "reform cannot be achieved under Governments installed by the (foreign) occupier through rigged elections conducted under the supervision of the United Nations and protected by B-52s and Apache helicopter rockets."

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