Iraq Reviews Security After Attacks
BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials suspended efforts to remove fortifications from the capital on Thursday in response to a devastating pair of bombings that killed 95 people the day before.
They also detained 11 Iraqi police and military officers for investigation in connection with the bombings.
At the same time, United States officials praised the Iraqi military’s handling of the aftermath of the attack, the deadliest since American troops pulled out of the streets of Baghdad and other cities on June 30.
“The Iraqis were fully in the lead yesterday and remain there today,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, the United States military spokesman in Iraq. “They were the first responders and established security. They later requested U.S. forces’ assistance, which we provided to complement the Iraqi efforts.”
But American officers on the scene, three hours after the blasts on Wednesday, said they had not yet been asked for assistance. The Baghdad Operations Command said a total of 1,203 people were hospitalized with wounds. By Thursday, 558 of them had been released.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki held a late-night meeting with his military and police chiefs Wednesday, and afterward his office released a statement saying the attacks were “without a doubt a call to re-evaluate our security plans and mechanisms to face the challenge of terrorism.”
An Iraqi government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said that the prime minister ordered an immediate cessation to operations to remove blast walls and similar fortifications from around the capital. No date for resumption of the work was given.
The prime minister had previously ordered the removal of blast walls from major thoroughfares within 40 days, by the middle of September. Blast walls and fortifications, as well as some of the checkpoints protecting the Foreign Ministry, one of the targets, had just been removed in recent weeks.
Previously, only official vehicles could use the roads around the Foreign Ministry and the adjacent approaches to the Green Zone, which are close to Parliament and government office buildings.
“Of course lifting the barriers took a role in yesterday’s bombs,” said Adel Barwari, a member of Parliament’s security committee. “I had already said that it is not time for such a step. If the barriers hadn’t been removed, the trucks would not have been able to reach the two ministries.”
The Baghdad Operations Command, which coordinates all security forces in the capital, on Thursday issued a terse statement announcing the arrests of the 11 officers, all of them fairly low ranking. They included the commanders of two battalions stationed in the areas of the bombings, and the chiefs of intelligence, police officers and even the top traffic wardens in the two neighborhoods where the bombings occurred.
No charges were specified, and the officers were not identified by name.
“I cannot say if the detainees are involved or only negligent because the investigation is not over yet,” Mr. Barwari said.
The arrests were unlikely to mollify some Iraqi politicians who called for a shake-up in the country’s military command.
“The military leadership needs to be changed, the intelligence services, too, and we will demand that in a strong way in Parliament,” said Hadi al-Ameri, leader of the Shiite Badr Organization and chairman of the Parliament’s security committee, appearing on Iraqiya, the state-owned television network.
“We have six intelligence services,” he added. “How did these trucks get into this sensitive area?” A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense said large trucks were banned from Baghdad except late at night.
The truck bomb that was detonated in front of the Foreign Ministry killed 60 people and wounded hundreds, minutes after another truck bomb had exploded outside the Finance Ministry in another part of downtown Baghdad, killing 35.
On Thursday, Iraqiya broadcast security camera video outside the Foreign Ministry showing a stake-bed truck, loaded with bright red water tanks. The plastic water tanks, a type common in Iraq, carried the explosives. Moments later the blast obliterated the scene.
The truck was similar to one that Iraqi security forces found nearby on Wednesday, after it aroused neighbors’ suspicions. State television showed one of the red water tanks filled to the top with a white powdery substance, possibly nitrates. There were another six or seven water tanks in that truck, although it was not clear if they were filled with anything.
Maj. Gen. Jihad al-Jabouri, commander of the Iraqi Army’s Al Sakr Brigade, its bomb squad, said the trucks were all carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, along with artillery and mortar shells and detonators. The explosion set off many secondary explosions of the shells, which fired off in random directions, he said.
“It is not a modern method,” he said. “Terrorists always use these materials.”
The truck that hit the Foreign Ministry had 4,400 pounds of explosives, he said, while that at the Finance Ministry carried 3,300 pounds. The empty truck had 2,000 pounds.
Iraqi soldiers were shown dancing and cheering as they surrounded the truck.
A statement from the Baghdad Operations Command said that authorities also intercepted a intended suicide bomb car in the Mansour neighborhood, not far from the Foreign Ministry, and arrested two al Qaeda operatives in the car.
“The bombings were timed to coincide with our assumption of responsibility for Iraqi security,” the prime minister said, “led and supported by well-known actors from outside.”
Mr. Ameri demanded that the government reveal which countries it suspects of aiding the attackers. “Let the security forces come to Parliament and say that this or that country stands behind the terrorists so the Parliament could confront any country that is,” he said.
Iraqi officials have been critical of their Arab neighbors for not speaking out against terrorism in Iraq, and this week Maliki went to Damascus, Syria, to discuss, among other things, infiltration of insurgents across the common border.
“What a lot of the Shia I talk to are concerned about is they haven’t heard condemnation from some other countries in the region,” said the United States Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher R. Hill, referring to past terrorist attacks. “If they are saying anything, it’s not heard here.”
Source: New York Times
