Dozens taken into custody after attacks killed 155
Arrests follow massive Iraqi car bombings
Published:
Iraq arrested dozens of military and security staff yesterday over the Baghdad suicide bombings that killed 155 people.
The crackdown is being seen as an attempt to calm public anger over the failure to protect people, with elections in January and the US troop withdrawal both looming.
A military spokesman said 11 army officers and 50 security officials have been taken into custody over Sunday’s bombings – the worst attacks in Iraq in over two years.
The massive blasts at the justice ministry and the Baghdad provincial administration angered many Iraqis, who questioned how the bombers could have got explosives-laden vehicles through an area packed with checkpoints and security personnel.
While other suspects have been detained, these were the first arrests of security officials.
The military commander and the police chief of Baghdad’s Salhiya district, where the blast occurred, were among those arrested.
They were held because of their responsibility for protecting the area where the bombings occurred.
The investigation will determine whether they were negligent or if they actually helped the insurgents.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile, said he was sending a senior UN official to Baghdad, in response to a request from Iraq’s prime minister for an investigation into a suicide bombing of two government ministries in August that killed more than 100 people.
Iraq has blamed an alliance between al Qaida in Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath Party for the pair of truck bombings on August 19 outside the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad.
Al Qaida’s umbrella group in Iraq claimed responsibility for the August attacks and for Sunday’s bombings, raising fears Iraq will return to the violence that raged across the country in 2006 and 2007.
Fears have been fuelled by the inability of politicians to agree on an election law, throwing into doubt their ability to pull off January’s elections on time.
