General shot in latest attack on Iraqi officials

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot and seriously wounded a senior Defence Ministry official in Baghdad yesterday, police said, in what appeared to be part of a campaign against the top echelons of Iraq's US-backed administration.

The shooting of General Khalil al-Ibadi, in charge of food supplies for the armed forces, and his driver as they were about to leave for work occurred a day after another prominent security official was killed in the capital.

Police General Ahmed Dawod, a deputy chief of Baghdad municipality's protection units, was shot dead as he left for his office on Tuesday.

Such attacks underline the urgency that new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki faces in strengthening his forces to quell widespread militant and sectarian violence three years after US forces invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.

Two months ago, a sniper shot the commander of the Iraqi division in Baghdad in the head and, 10 days later, a roadside bomb hit a convoy of cars used by the armed forces chief of staff, General Babakir Zebari, who was not present.

Maliki has yet to decide who will head the defence and interior ministries, jobs that are crucial for restoring stability but still vacant because of wrangling between Shi'ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians in his grand coalition.

The United States and Britain, the main allies in the Iraqi war, count on the tough-talking Shi'ite Islamist to tackle the Saddam loyalists, al Qaeda militants, party militias and criminal gangs who have turned Iraq into a killing field.

US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, both under domestic pressure over an increasingly unpopular war, meet in Washington today to discuss Iraq.

In other violence in Baghdad, a bomb planted in a building wounded 13 people. And, in what has become a daily occurrence in a cycle of attacks and revenge killings, four bodies were found in the city with gunshot wounds and showing signs of torture.

North of the capital, a judge was kidnapped in the small town of Dujail, the latest in a wave of attacks on members of the judiciary highlighted by a UN report this week.

"The targeting of judicial professionals is particularly worrisome in the context of the deterioration of law and order," the bi-monthly human rights report on Iraq said.

"There are reports that many judges, especially those working on terrorism or serious criminal cases, are facing intimidations or threats," it added.

Washington and London have a combined total of 140,000 troops in Iraq, suffering daily casualties in roadside bomb and other attacks, and both countries are keen to see progress so that they can start reducing their military presence.

However, they have resisted setting firm timetables, playing down comments by Maliki this week that Iraqi forces can take over security across Iraq by the end of 2007 and saying that conditions on the ground will determine when they can leave.

Security experts are doubtful about the ability of Iraq's army and police, due to expand to 325,000 personnel by December, to assume overall security responsibility in the near future.

John Chipman, director general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in a speech in London:

"The rank and file of both forces are neither well enough trained to be fully effective on their own, nor sufficiently loyal to the national government to remain above the sectarian struggles gouging Iraq's sense of national identity."

- REUTERS