Suicide barrage on Baghdad Government compound foiled

BAGHDAD - Iraqi forces have thwarted a triple suicide attack on Baghdad's Green Zone government compound, killing two bombers before they reached a checkpoint and capturing one alive, a US military spokesman said.

Police guarding the checkpoint spotted what they identified as a suicide bomber driving towards them during the morning rush hour, Brigadier General Donald Alston said. They opened fire, and the bomb went off before reaching the checkpoint.

Two other bombers, strapped with explosives, then ran toward them but were gunned down. One survived and, after an Iraqi explosives expert defused his bomb, was taken into custody.

He was being treated in hospital in the custody of Iraqi police, but US officers expected to interview him at some point, Alston told reporters.

The attack "failed in every way because of discipline and courage under fire of the Iraqi security forces", Alston said.

Alston said he believed no bystanders were killed. Doctors at the city's Yarmouk hospital said they had seen two bodies from the attack and five people were wounded, apparently including the captured bomber.

The vast Green Zone, comprising former palaces, hotels and government buildings along the bank of the Tigris River, is completely surrounded by towering concrete blast walls that often cut through entire neighbourhoods. It houses both the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government and its American backers.

It frequently comes under attack by mortars, or by bombers and gunmen outside its gates. But Thursday's coordinated attack was a notably brazen attempt to penetrate its defences.

ZARQAWI HENCHMAN CAUGHT

US forces also announced the capture of a man they described as a senior lieutenant of Iraqi al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the second person described as a key aide to the Jordanian militant whose capture they announced this week.

They said Abu Seba, caught in Ramadi on July 9, had played a role in the kidnapping and killing of Egypt's envoy to Iraq, Ihab el-Sherif, snatched from the street on July 2.

Catching Thursday's wounded suicide bomber is also a rare intelligence opportunity since few are caught alive.

Most suicide bombers are believed to be young Sunni Arab men from outside Iraq, loyal to groups like Zarqawi's. Such groups partly overlap with the insurgency among Iraq's own Sunni Arab minority, although many Iraqi Sunnis reject Qaeda's foreign influence, severe religious teachings and extreme violence.

Alston said he did not know the captured man's nationality.

Suicide bombings worsened sharply after the new government took office in April. But the Americans say the situation is now improving. Alston said there were 23 car bombs during the past week, including six in which the driver blew himself up, the lowest weekly tally of suicide car bombs in 11 weeks.

"MOTHER OF ALL MASSACRES"

But such bombings have not become less deadly. Thursday saw funerals for some of the 27 people, mostly children, killed on Wednesday when a bomber blew up his vehicle in a crowd near US troops.

In a nation numbed to horrors, the attack on children stood out. The Iraqi edition of pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat called it the "Mother of all Massacres".

One US soldier was among those killed, and three were among the injured, US forces said.

"The scene was almost indescribable," Battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Farrell told Reuters. "People nearest the blast, some were literally obliterated on the scene. Multiple lacerations and traumatic amputations. At least nine people I saw were killed instantly in horrific fashion."

Al Qaeda disowned any connection with the blast.

An Iraqi television crew travelling to funerals of victims was ambushed by gunmen on Thursday, wounding three journalists.

Also, near the northern oil capital of Kirkuk where ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds run high, gunmen killed three policemen and wounded two when they shot at their car in the town of Rashad. In Kirkuk itself an Iraqi soldier was killed and a female comrade wounded by gunmen in a car.

Thursday was a new public holiday in Iraq marking the 1958 revolution that overthrew a British-installed monarchy.

The new holiday could anger followers of Saddam, who in his youth tried to assassinate the 1958 coup leader Abdelkarim Kassem. Saddam's Baath party instead celebrated July 17, the anniversary of the 1968 putsch which brought it to power. Forces have been placed on heightened alert for both days.

- REUTERS