[A-List] Iraq: the quagmire deepens

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Iraq slips further into turmoil

US appointee dies from bullet wounds | Hotel used by NBC network is bombed |
Weapons inspector signs publishing deal

Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Friday September 26, 2003
The Guardian

America's attempts to rebuild Iraq suffered a serious blow yesterday when
Aqila al-Hashimi, one of the three women on the US-appointed Iraqi governing
council, died five days after she was shot outside her Baghdad home.

The death of the respected foreign ministry official serves as a grim
warning to any Iraqi seen to be involved in American-led efforts to reshape
the country.
While attacks on the US military have become a daily occurrence, militants
opposed to the occupation are widening their campaign to strike at softer
civilian targets.

Yesterday morning a bomb exploded outside a Baghdad hotel used by the US
television network NBC.

It killed a Somali hotel guard and injured two other people, including one
of the network's Canadian sound engineers.

Ms Hashimi, the only member of the council to have worked recently under
Saddam Hussein's regime, had turned away several of the bodyguards she was
offered, and refused to travel in armoured cars.

She was attacked just hours before she was due to fly to New York for this
week's UN general assembly. Bullets caused serious injury to her abdomen,
and she underwent several operations at a US military hospital.

A governing council statement said that Ms Hashimi "was martyred on the path
of struggle for freedom and democracy in [the] building of this great
nation. The heinous crime was committed by a godless and evil band known for
its oppressions and injustices".

Several members of the council have accused Saddam loyalists of the attack.

Tony Blair issued his own tribute to Ms Hashimi. "Her murderers and those
who support them only seek to undermine the Iraqi governing council and
destroy the efforts of all those rebuilding the country," he said. "They
care nothing for Iraq but they will not win."

In Baghdad yesterday US explosives experts were studying the scene of the
attack on the hotel. It is on Arasat Street, which is filled with
restaurants, expensive clothes shops and cigar emporiums.

The bomb was placed on the street, between the hotel and a generator.
Several windows were shattered by the blast, which injured David Moodie, a
soundman.
"I was awake," he said. "A chest of drawers in the room fell on me. I sleep
in the room immediately above the generator, so I guess I was lucky."
Although there were no signs on the building advertising NBC's presence,
there was a big white tent on the roof where the network's correspondents
stood for live shots. Al-Aike was widely known locally as a hotel housing
American reporters.

In a separate attack yesterday eight US soldiers in a convoy through the
northern city of Mosul were wounded in a sophisticated ambush.

Two roadside bombs detonated as the convoy passed, and when the military
Humvees stopped men opened fire. Three soldiers suffered serious injuries
and a Humvee was destroyed, the military said.

The US military also announced that a unit based in the troubled town of
Falluja had been cleared of blame for their accidentally shooting dead eight
Iraqi policemen two weeks ago.

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said
his soldiers acted "within the construct of the military's rules of
engagement". The full details of such investigations are rarely disclosed
and US officers never talk about the precise wording of their "rules of
engagement".

Gen Sanchez said the shooting lasted only a matter of seconds. "The initial
reports were clear. There was initial fire and it was a 30-second
engagement. At the end of it, the policemen were dead," he said.

His announcement contradicted the account given by several of the policemen
injured in the attack. They said they did not fire on the US position but
were attacked as they chased a suspected bandit.

They said they shouted in English to the soldiers that they were policemen,
and said the barrage of gunfire continued for 45 minutes. The two police
vehicles were destroyed and a nearby hospital was severely damaged by
heavy-calibre bullets.

The Ministry of Defence said yesterday that a British Territorial Army
soldier had died in a gun accident at a base in Shaiba, near Basra, in
southern Iraq. Sergeant John Nightingale, 32, from Leeds, died on Tuesday.
His death was being investigated.

In another blow to US efforts to suggest that security is improving, the UN
is to further reduce the numbers of its international staff in Iraq,
following the second bombing at its headquarters in Baghdad in a month.

It had 600 staff in Iraq until the August 19 bombing which killed 22 people.
Kofi Annan then ordered the international staff be cut significantly.

"Today there remain 42 in Baghdad and 44 in the north of the country, and
those numbers can be expected to shrink further over the next few days,"
Fred Eckhard, Mr Annan's spokesman, said.

On Monday a second bombing at the HQ killed one person