Baghdad 'house bomb' kills 28 during police raid

BAGHDAD - Twenty-eight people were killed in an explosion that flattened several houses in Baghdad overnight, apparently when a police unit was lured into a trap laid by insurgents, officials said yesterday.

Six policemen were among the dead and four others were missing, Interior Ministry spokesman said. A further 21 people were wounded in the blast, in the Ghazaliya district of western Baghdad. Most were neighbors.

The police had responded to a call from a neighbor saying that there was shooting coming from a house, the spokesman said: "When the police arrived and went in, the house blew up.

"It seems to have been a trap."

"The house was turned into a bomb," a police officer said.

Three houses were entirely destroyed, razed to piles of bricks and rubble. Entire families were wiped out, said neighbors who believed foreign fighters may have lived there.

A US military spokesman said he had no information.

Earlier on Tuesday, about two dozen police and other Iraqi security force personnel were killed in other attacks by insurgents who appear bent on wrecking next month's US-backed election.

Seven weeks after a US offensive on the guerrilla bastion of Falluja in a bid to quell the revolt before the Jan. 30 vote, there are signs the insurgency has recovered much of its vigor.

The quantity of explosive used in Baghdad was a reminder of the vast supplies from Saddam Hussein's army that the insurgents have at their disposal.

ZARQAWI AND BIN LADEN

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Islamist believed to have allied with nationalist Sunni Arab supporters of Saddam Hussein, won the public backing for the first time of Osama bin Laden as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq in an audiotape broadcast this week.

Zarqawi claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack on the headquarters of a major Shi'ite Muslim party in Baghdad on Monday, which killed at least nine people but missed SCIRI party leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Hakim had already blamed the alliance of violent Islamists and Saddam's Baathists but said the Sunni minority community was blameless and his supporters would not retaliate. Long-oppressed Shi'ites expect the election to give them power at the expense of Sunnis, who dominated the country under Saddam.

Washington has put a US$25 million price on Zarqawi's head. US commanders say he may have fled Falluja before the US assault on the city west of Baghdad.

Sections of Baghdad have seen clashes with insurgents in recent months, including the central Haifa Street district. The Ghazaliya area, where the houses blew up, is off the main highway to the west, leading to Falluja, 30 miles away.

Iraqi and US forces have announced successes in the past two weeks in killing or capturing fighters in Baghdad but regular mortar, rocket and bomb attacks make clear there are considerable numbers of insurgents in the capital itself, as well as in the Sunni Arab heartlands of the north and west.

POLICE STATION ATTACKS

In the bloodiest of Tuesday's attacks before the Baghdad explosion, insurgents overran a police post near Saddam's home town of Tikrit, 110 miles north of Baghdad.

They hauled out 12 men and shot them dead, then blew up the police station in a dramatic show of force, a day after bin Laden publicly endorsed Zarqawi for the first time and declared holy war on US and Iraqi forces trying to secure the election.

US forces in Mosul, Iraq's anarchic third city in the north, said they and Iraqi forces repelled three separate massed attacks on police stations on Tuesday.

The timing of the various attacks and broadcast of the al Qaeda leader's tape seemed coincidental but together they racked up the pressure on Iraqi voters to stay at home on Jan. 30 and seemed aimed to instil fear in Iraq's new security forces.

Both have grave implications for US prospects in Iraq.

Bin Laden's call for a boycott of the election and his endorsement of Zarqawi will find few willing supporters in Iraq. But the threat of being killed will put many off voting anyway.

The chances have risen that an assembly will be elected that gives Shi'ites an exaggerated majority, and so finds little legitimacy among Sunnis. That will upset Washington's hopes for a representative government that can handle its own security.

Security may also have to remain in US hands if Iraqi forces succumb to the relentless intimidation of the insurgents.

- REUTERS