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Jaafari's Adviser shot dead

Atul Aneja

MANAMA: Iraqi guerillas have mounted a string of attacks including a car bombing outside a popular Baghdad restaurant and the assassination of a Security Adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

The bomb went off during lunchtime outside the Habayibna restaurant in the Talibia neighbourhood, killing at least four persons and injuring more than 70.

The blast set ablaze several cars parked on the street, and bodies were seen lying on the street.

"The car was parked in front of the restaurant before it exploded," a police officer was quoted as saying.

He said that the explosion took place at 2:15 p.m. local time, when police officers usually assemble for lunch at the restaurant.

The blast follows a high profile assassination where two carloads of gunmen killed Wael al-Rubaei, a top national security official and Adviser to Mr. Jaafari.

Five U.S. soldiers killed

A day earlier, gunmen shot dead Ali Moussa, a senior government functionary from the Ministry of Trade.

Analysts point out that the string of killings targeting the official machinery aims to disrupt the functioning of the new Government.

In other cases of violence, five U.S. soldiers were killed in northern Iraq on Sunday.

Four of them died in separate roadside bomb attacks, while another was killed in a vehicle accident.

The total number of U.S. dead in Iraq has now climbed to 1,626.

In relentless attacks by guerillas aimed at seizing the initiative, at least five persons were killed and 18 wounded in a suicide truck bombing in the mixed Kurdish-Turkoman town of Tuz Khurmatu, south of the oil city Kirkuk.

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