BAGHDAD: Six Iraqi civilians, including two children, were killed yesterday in motor attacks launched by insurgents in northern Iraq.Separate mortar barrages on Sunday and yesterday apparently targeting police stations in the northern city of Mosul killed six Iraqis, US and Iraqi officials said.
Gunmen also killed an Egyptian with US citizenship in western Baghdad, police Lt Hamid Zaki said yesterday. The victim, identified as Ahmed Kamal, was shot dead on Sunday while driving his car. Zaki said Kamal worked as a contractor with Iraq's Electricity Ministry.
Kazem Shelash, a senior member of the disbanded Baath Party in Basra, was killed by two gunmen in a speeding car outside his shop in Basra, police Col Karim Al Zeidi said.
A US soldier was killed on Sunday when a roadside bomb exploded near a military patrol in northern Iraq in the province of Kirkuk, the military said yesterday. Iraqi police shot at a suicide car bomber, whose vehicle still exploded at a western Baghdad checkpoint yesterday, wounding three police and three bystanders, a police official said. The US military said the bomber's hands were tied to the steering wheel, indicating he had no alternative but to carry out the attack, even if he had second thoughts.
Meanwhile, Australia's top Sunni Muslim cleric, who is in Iraq trying to negotiate the release of Australian hostage and Douglas Wood, 63, said yesterday he has seen footage of the captive indicating that he is alive, but not the man himself.
"I have seen a recent CD video lasting 12 to 15 minutes where Wood is alive and good and in honest hands," Sheik Taj El Din Al Hilaly said of California-based Wood, who was captured by insurgents in late April.
An Iraqi court chosen to try Saddam Hussein rejected yesterday government statements that the deposed dictator will face justice within two months, saying there was no fixed timetable.
"Any trial date depends on the judges who will consider indictments against the accused after completing their investigations," the court said.
LIST OF CHARGES AGAINST SADDAM
A list of 14 cases as specified by the special tribunal which will try alleged crimes committed by Saddam:
The 1987-88 Anfal campaign in northern Iraq, a depopulation scheme that killed and expelled hundreds of thousands of Kurds from northern Iraq.
Mortar bombardment of Kirkuk. No details available.
The events of 1991 in southern Iraq, referring to Saddam's suppression of a Shi'ite uprising following the US-led Gulf War in Kuwait.
The massacre of Dujail, the 1982 execution of at least 50 Iraqis in the Shi'ite town of Dujail, 80km north of Baghdad, in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt against Saddam.
Forced emigration of the Fayli Kurds, thousands of Shi'ite Kurds who were pushed out of northern Iraq into Iran.
Halabja, a Kurdish town where in 1988 a chemical weapons attack killed an estimated 5,000 people.
The execution of 8,000 from the Barzani tribe, a powerful Kurdish clan to which the current Kurdistan Democratic Party leader, Massoud Barzani, belongs.
The 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which Iraqi forces occupied for seven months until they were expelled by a US-led coalition during the 1991 Gulf War.
Execution of prominent religious figures. No details provided.
Execution of prominent political figures. No details provided
Crimes against religious parties. No details provided.
Crimes against political parties. No details provided.
Crimes against secular parties. No details provided.
The drying of the marshes. Saddam ordered new dams, canals and pipelines built to dry up the Mesopotamian marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers following the 1991 Shi'ite uprising. Thousands of Shi'ites used the area to live and fish in the area, that was reputed to be the biblical Garden of Eden but turned into an arid salt bed.