Six killed in Baghdad car bomb as insurgents pick off Iraqi army targets

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber killed six people Tuesday outside an Iraqi army recruitment centre in Baghdad, as insurgents stepped up attacks on targets ranging from would-be recruits to top military officers in their homes.
The latest attacks came as politicians continued to wrangle over the make-up of the next government, more than 11 weeks after general elections, a delay that many fear plays into rebel hands.
In the fourth such attack in the capital in less than a week, a suicide bomber blew up a car outside a palace of ousted president Saddam Hussein, now used by the army, killing six people and wounding 40, a defence ministry spokesman said.
Most of the victims were soldiers or would-be recruits.
The Al-Qaeda-linked group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in an Internet site which it habitually uses to claim operations in Iraq, said it carried out the attack in Baghdad.
The defence ministry spokesman said another attack against an army patrol in Khalidiyah, west of the capital, killed at least three more soldiers.
In a chilling raid underlining insecurity in post-Saddam Iraq, several men in army uniforms late Monday forced their way into the southern Baghdad home of Major General Adnan Faush Farawni, a senior advisor to the defence ministry.
Both he and his son, Captain Alladin Farawni, who worked in intelligence, were shot dead, the interior and defence ministries told AFP.
In another Monday evening attack, an inspector general responsible for southern provinces, Brigadier General Hussein Hato al-Jabeeri, and his driver were shot dead in their car in Amara, some 350 kilometres (210 miles) southeast of Baghdad, a police captain said.
On Sunday, another top ranking officer, Brigadier General Yunis Mohammed Sulaiman, was murdered on his way to work in the main northern city of Mosul.
In the continuing bloodshed that leaves civilians unspared, three men in a car on Tuesday gunned down Fuwad Ibrahim al-Bayatie, head of the German language department at Baghdad University outside his west Baghdad home, an interior ministry official said.
Fears for the safety of its civilian nationals brought a call from the Philippines government on Tuesday for them to leave Iraq. The call came after two Filipinos died in Iraq last week.
President Gloria Arroyo's spokesman Ignacio Bunye said the attacks were a "warning that the situation in Iraq remains dangerous to our people."
Up to an estimated 6,000 Filipinos work in Iraq, many for the US military.
The Manila government last year banned travel to Iraq following the abduction of truck driver Angelo de la Cruz and accountant Roberto Tarongoy.
The kidnappers freed de la Cruz after Manila pulled out its small military-police contingent in Iraq, while unknown gunmen are still holding Tarongoy.
In Stockholm, the foreign ministry said a Swede of Iraqi origin had gone missing in Syria while on his way to Iraq and not been heard from for three weeks.
According to Swedish news agency TT, the man, whose name was not disclosed, is a senior member of the Iraqi Communist Party and was working as an economic advisor to the Iraqi government when he disappeared.
Meanwhile, politicians pushed on with their efforts to reach agreement on the make-up of the new Iraqi government, 11 weeks after general elections won by the Shiite majority and the Kurds.
An MP involved in the negotiations, Mariam al-Rais, from the majority United Alliance list, said the government should be announced by the end of the week.
A last sticking point involved the number of ministries to be given to members of the outgoing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's formation, she said.
The Shiite-based United Alliance was expected to be handed 17 ministries, including interior, oil and finance, while the Kurds would get nine, retaining the foreign ministry, she told AFP.
Sunnis were slated to get four ministries, Turkmans one, Christians one and Allawi's formation four, she added.
Angry MPs suspended a sitting of parliament for an hour Tuesday and then passed a motion demanding an official apology from the United States after an MP was manhandled by a US soldier at a checkpoint in Baghdad.
They called for the soldier to be disciplined.
The US army said a 51-year-old man detained at Camp Bucca, in the south of the country, died Tuesday, apparently of natural causes.
Camp Bucca, the country's largest US-run detention facility, has more than 6,000 inmates. US and Iraqi forces are currently holding more than 17,000 people.
On the economic front, Iraq has officially resumed crude oil exports to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, a State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) official said.
He declined to give any new export statistics for security reasons.
Oil exports through Turkey, previously averaging 350,000 barrels per day from Kirkuk oil fields in northern Iraq, have repeatedly been brought to a halt by sabotage.

04/19/2005 14:30 GMT