Governing council chief killed in blast

It did not say if it was a suicide mission that killed Salim, head of the US-appointed Council. The two men were named as Ali Khaled Al-Jabouri and Mohammed Hassan Al-Samarrai.

US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said a car bomber was waiting in a queue of vehicles at a checkpoint outside the main Baghdad headquarters of the US-led administration.

Salim, who was the current holder of the rotating Governing Council presidency, was the second of the 25-member Council to be killed. In September gunmen assassinated Aqila Al-Hashemi, one of three women on the council.

The Council has selected Ghazi Mashal Ajil Al-Yawer, a civil engineer from Mosul, to replace council chief Izzadine Saleem, a council member said.

Al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim, was chosen at a council meeting shortly after the blast, according to council member Mahmoud Othman. At least six people were killed as the blast tore through the crush of cars and pedestrians waiting to get into the heavily guarded compound of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, blowing bodies apart and melting the asphalt.

‘‘The other members escaped unharmed. They managed to get through the checkpoint before the explosion. Salim was still waiting to enter,’’ Deputy Foreign Minister Hamed Al-Bayati said.

He said, it was too soon to say if the attack was aimed specifically at the councillors, gathering for a meeting of the 25-member body which is headquartered in the Green Zone. More than a dozen vehicles were destroyed, including minibuses from which doctors wearing masks and rubber gloves pulled burnt bodies. ‘‘There were a lot of cars and people on foot standing there, and then this massive explosion,’’ said Raad Mukhlis, a security guard at a nearby residential compound. ‘‘I saw body parts and martyrs everywhere.’’

The attack underlined the vulnerability of the Baghdad administration just six weeks before the US-led occupiers are set to handover sovereignty to Iraqis, though officials insisted violence would not derail the political process. ‘‘This will strengthen our resolve to continue the political process,’’ Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum in Jordan. While US-led forces battle insurgents, the scandal over the treatment of Iraqi prisoners continued to haunt the occupiers.

The prisoner scandal has shattered US credibility in Iraq and the Arab world as well as dented President George W. Bush’s re-election expectations in November elections.

The Bush administration, which insists the abuse was confined to a number of low-level guards, derided the report by New Yorker magazine. The Pentagon said that the abuses, in pictures published around the world, were not sanctioned.

Meanwhile, heavy clashes around one of the bridges spanning the Euphrates River in the southern city of Nassiriya forced the Italians to abandon a small garrison and withdraw to their main camp about 10 km outside Nassiriya. One Italian soldier was killed and at least 16 wounded.

Fighting between coalition troops and Sadr’s Mehdi Army has widened since Friday, when US Troops pushed onto sacred ground in Najaf to attack militia positions in its ancient cemetery. US Commanders call it a ‘‘minor uprising’’, but it has intensified calls for the coalition to plan its exit. —(Reuters)