41 feared killed in Iraq bomb attacks
AGAIN, violence took the centre stage yesterday in crisis-torn Iraq as suicide bombers in two different operations struck, killing about 47 persons.
A suicide bomber blew up his white four-wheel-drive car at an army recruiting base in Baghdad, killing 35 people and wounding 138, in Iraq's deadliest single bombing since a suicide attack on the same target killed 47 in February.
Later yesterday, a car bomb killed six paramilitary civil defence guards and wounded four near the town of Balad, north` of the Iraqi capital, the United States (U.S.) military said.
Insurgents, believed to include Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein, Iraqi nationalists and foreign Islamist militants, have attacked the oil industry, government officials and security forces ahead of the June 30 handover.
Oil exports, Iraq's economic mainstay, remained paralysed yesterday after sabotage attacks on pipeline in the north and south. But an oil official said some exports could resume today after repairs in a pipeline to a Gulf terminal.
Passers-by and army volunteers took the brunt of the Baghdad blast, the city's third suicide bombing this week.
Iraqis hoping to join the new army were waiting outside the base when hot shrapnel exploded in the air.
"Suddenly, there was a huge explosion. Ten or 15 others were on top of me on the street. I can't go back. No way," said army volunteer Ibrahim Ismail from his hospital bed.
"This was a cowardly attack. It is a demonstration again that these attacks are aimed at the stability of Iraq and the Iraqi people," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said at the scene.
Iraq's new defence minister promised a military crackdown on insurgents.
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that at the request of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet, Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the military to secretly hold a suspected terrorist in Iraq, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
The suspected terrorist has been held since October without being given an identification number and without the International Committee of the Red Cross being notified, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Both conditions violate the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners of war.
Rumsfeld ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have the prisoner secretly detained on the last day of October, when Tenet made the request, Whitman said.
"The director of central intelligence requested he not be assigned an internment serial number while the CIA worked to determine his precise disposition," Whitman said.
The Bush administration has argued that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to suspected terrorists who do not follow the conventions themselves. But Rumsfeld and other administration officials have said the Geneva Conventions applied to all U.S. military activities in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
The prisoner will be given a number and the Red Cross will be formally notified soon, Whitman said.
"The ICRC should have been notified about the detainee earlier," Whitman said. "We should have taken steps, and we have taken the necessary steps to rectify the situation."
The Pentagon's admission came a day before a human rights group released a report accusing the U.S. of keeping an unknown number of terrorist suspects in secret lockups around the world.
A report from New York-based Human Rights First said the Bush administration was violating U.S. and international law by refusing to notify all detainees' families or give names, numbers and locations of all terror war prisoners to the Red Cross.
None of that was done in the Iraqi detainee's case, Whitman said.
Keeping secret prisoners creates conditions for abuses such as the humiliations and beatings suffered by some Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the group argues.
"The official secrecy surrounding U.S. practices has made conditions ripe for illegality and abuse," said the report from the body, formerly called the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
The group said the U.S. should immediately allow Red Cross access to all terror war detainees, notify the prisoners' families and announce the number and location of such prisoners.
The Iraqi prisoner is so far the only individual Defence Department officials have acknowledged shielding from the Red Cross. Before Wednesday's admission, Pentagon spokesmen would not confirm or deny if anyone was being held in secret.
"We've not talked about the location of specific detainees other than Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba simply because it gets into the classified realm," Air Force Major Michael Shavers said in a response to questions before the Iraq admission.
President Bush and members of his administration have said repeatedly that all detainees are treated humanely. Pentagon officials have argued that announcing the numbers or locations of all detainees would indicate the scope of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts to terrorist groups and give them ideas of sites to attack.
The secret prisoner in Iraq is believed to be a high-ranking member of Ansar al-Islam, a radical group which had been based in northern Iraq before the U.S. invasion last year. U.S. officials believe the man was involved in attacks on coalition troops, Whitman said.
