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BAGHDAD, Iraq Insurgents assassinated the
governor of Baghdad, Ali al-Haidri, yesterday, the
most senior official killed in Iraq since political
authority over the country was transferred to an
interim government last summer.
Insurgents also killed five U.S. soldiers in three
attacks, eight Iraqi commandos and two others in a
suicide bombing at a commando base in Baghdad, and
three Iraqi soldiers in a roadside bombing northeast
of the capital.
"The war's worse, the insurgency's worse," said a
senior U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, who spoke
on condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly.
"This is not going to be a short fight. Nobody
should think it is."
The assessment reflected a new willingness among
senior Iraqi and American officials to acknowledge
that large tracts of the country remain beyond the
control of their combined forces. More than three
months ago, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said
during a visit to Washington that 15 of Iraq's 18
provinces were stable and largely peaceful. Now, in
interviews, he routinely refers to the situation
here as "our catastrophe."
Iraq's Shiite Muslim-populated south and sections of
the north populated by ethnic Kurds are stable and
relatively secure. Their inhabitants are looking
forward to elections scheduled for Jan. 30 that will
give them power in Baghdad after years of
repression.
But daily spasms of violence persist in Iraq's
midsection. Iraqi and U.S. officials acknowledge
that attacks have become routine in the six central
and northern provinces where Sunni Muslims - the
once-dominant minority whose power evaporated with
the fall of Saddam Hussein - reside in large
numbers. Including Baghdad, the six provinces
account for half of Iraq's territory and at least
half of its 25 million people.
Iraq's interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer, told the
Reuters news agency yesterday that the United
Nations should "stand up for their responsibilities
and obligations" by assessing whether the election
can be conducted on schedule.
"On a logical basis, there are signs that it will be
a tough call to hold the election," al-Yawer said in
a rare departure from official assurances that the
Jan. 30 date of the vote is firm.
Instability remains the worst in the region north
and west of the capital known as the Sunni Triangle.
A Marine was killed yesterday in Anbar province,
west of Baghdad, and a roadside bomb killed a
soldier with the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division
near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad.
In far northern Nineveh province, where, as in Anbar,
insecurity led to the cancellation of voter
registration last month, U.S. commanders this week
doubled the force trying to control Mosul.
Officials, including Allawi, have hinted that an
offensive on Iraq's third largest city is in the
offing. "We're going to do better in Mosul," one
Western diplomat said.
At the same time, armored battalions of the 1st
Cavalry Division rolled last week into the grimy
towns south of Baghdad in an area of north Babil
province that, last year, became so dangerous to
travelers that Iraqis began to call it the "triangle
of death."
New flash points glimmer on the horizon.
Richard Armitage, a deputy secretary of state, in
recent days joined a flurry of U.S. officials
scrambling to dissuade Kurdish parties from sitting
out the portion of the election that will seat a
provincial council in Kirkuk, the oil-rich city
claimed by Kurds, ethnic Turkmen and Arabs.
Yesterday, U.S. and Iraqi officials were attempting
to hold together a compromise slate of candidates
that would delay a showdown for the northern city by
preserving a provisional status quo put in place by
the U.S.-led occupation authority.
"Kurdish participation is assured and guaranteed,"
the Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd,
promised at a news conference yesterday.
The toll in attacks around Iraq yesterday reflected
the targets most frequently chosen by insurgents in
the run-up to elections: Iraqi civilians prominent
in the U.S.-installed interim government, American
soldiers regarded by some Iraqis as an occupying
force and, most of all, the freshly trained Iraqi
armed forces being groomed to take responsibility
for security in their country.
Baghdad's governor was killed by insurgents who
swarmed over his convoy from several directions in
one of the capital's poorest neighborhoods. Six
bodyguards were killed with him.
Al-Haidri was a serious, meticulous man who rose
from being an air-conditioning repair merchant to
the capital's top position through neighborhood,
district and city councils established after the
fall of Saddam.
His assassination came hours after a yellow fuel
truck exploded at the entrance to an Iraqi commando
base near the city center. The blast damaged 40
homes and destroyed 15 cars. Parents ran to the
nearby Husari primary school to gather their
children.
"I still don't know how I survived," said Ziyad
Ghali, 34, who was driving to a bakery to buy bread
for breakfast at the time of the attack. "I cannot
forget the sound of the explosion."
Afterward, fresh blood stained the walls and
shrapnel from the tanker lay everywhere. The mood of
the neighborhood swung between anger and depression.
Al-Qaida in Iraq, the group headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
a Jordanian, claimed responsibility for both attacks
in separate Internet postings. Also in Baghdad, a
roadside bomb killed three American soldiers and
wounded two at 11 a.m., the military said. Names
were withheld pending notification of next of kin.
The Washington Post
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