At Least 17 Die in Iraq on Eve of Sacred Feast

A bomb-laden car barreled into a barricade and exploded at police headquarters Saturday in this northern city, killing nine Iraqis, including officers lined up for paychecks with a bonus for dangerous duty. Three U.S. soldiers were also killed in Iraq’s north, and five civilians died in a Baghdad rocket attack, bringing to 17 the toll on the eve of a sacred Muslim feast.

The latest carnage comes amid warnings that insurgents are increasingly targeting Iraqis who work or associate with U.S. troops. Iraqi police have been particularly vulnerable -- their headquarters frequently are targets, and more than 300 officers have been killed since the U.S.-led coalition occupied Iraq last spring.

The three soldiers with the 4th Infantry Division were killed Saturday when a hidden bomb detonated as their convoy traveled southwest of Kirkuk, the military said. No other details were available. Meanwhile, another U.S. soldier died of wounds suffered in a bombing Tuesday west of Baghdad. Their deaths brought to 523 the number of U.S. troops who have died since the war began, according to unofficial tallies.

In Baghdad, a mortar round or rocket plunged into an alley in the densely populated Baladiyat district late Saturday, killing five people, according to witnesses. The explosion in the neighborhood, which is known for its large Palestinian population, was one of a number that shook the capital Saturday evening.

Early today, a U.S. military spokesman said at least some of the blasts were part of “Operation Iron Resolve,” an anti-insurgency mission. But he could not provide information on the location of the operation, which was continuing this morning, or any casualties. It was unclear if the mortar fire in Baladiyat was related to the U.S. operation.

Saturday’s bloodshed raised fears that violence could escalate during the three-day holiday of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, when Muslim families traditionally come together.

Insurgents in Iraq have struck on significant holidays, including Oct. 27, the first day of Ramadan, when coordinated suicide attacks in Baghdad killed at least 35 people.

U.S. officials have said attacks on coalition forces have declined, but the death toll among U.S. troops continues to mount.

The bombing Saturday in Mosul illustrated another shift in Iraq’s insurgent violence. This ethnically mixed city was a pocket of relative peace until a wave of unrest hit in November. U.S. troops cracked down in December, and the violence tapered off.

The blast Saturday, believed to be the work of a suicide bomber, was the first major such attack in Mosul. In December, a suicide attacker plowed a powerful car bomb into the entrance of a U.S. base northwest of Mosul, wounding at least 31 soldiers.

“They are really cowards,” policeman Manhal Usan, 32, fumed from his hospital cot. His face was caked with blood; his eyes glittered feverishly. “If they want to face us, let them do it man to man. But they’ll never do that.”

Like many of the men wounded Saturday, Usan insisted that he works for his countrymen, not for the Americans. He’s been a policeman for 17 years, and now he staffs a roadside checkpoint.

“I have to make a living for my family,” he said. “And there are no jobs.” Sometimes, he said defensively, he tries to give his fellow Iraqis a little leeway -- turning a blind eye when he sees banned weapons in their cars, for example.

“But we, the police, are not so powerful,” he said ruefully. “Until today, I didn’t have a gun. We’re not backed.”

Usan was standing near a concrete barricade when the car blew up. He never saw it coming, he said. He was hurled into the air by the force of the blast, cut head to toe by shrapnel.

“I didn’t understand anything; I couldn’t feel anything,” he said. “I lost my sense. I could only hear an assault rifle firing.”

The bomb shredded cars and tossed them aloft, blasted the front of the police station to rubble and snapped street lamps.

Imanuel Khoshaba noticed the crowd of policemen in front of the station as he arrived at work at the Assyrian Party Headquarters a few doors down. Spirits were high among the officers. It was a sunny morning, the day before the three-day holiday. Moreover, many of the officers were to collect extra pay this month -- a danger allowance they felt they well deserved.

A few minutes later, witnesses said, a car cut across the traffic, slammed through a security barricade and exploded. The blast left a gaping crater in the street.

Khoshaba said he dashed out to a street filled with burning cars, scattered limbs and bleeding men. He loaded as many of the wounded into his car as he could and headed for a hospital.

“This is not an Iraqi person who did this,” he said. “They target every person who wants peace and democracy.”

At a Mosul hospital, there was bewilderment and outrage. People blamed foreign fighters, their countrymen or the Americans for their suffering.

“If you have a house without a fence, everybody will enter,” said Abdel Hakin Kasar, a lawyer who was visiting a wounded cousin. “Ever since the war, we have no borders.”

“Ever since the Americans came, we’ve shouldered all the problems,” said 20-year-old Basil Hamid, a checkpoint guard who spoke through a mask of dried blood. “From the day I became a police officer, I knew I was vulnerable.”

In Baghdad, on his last day as president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi announced that the council hoped to complete work in the next two weeks on the draft law that will govern the country in the interim period after sovereignty is returned to Iraq -- a hand-over scheduled for June 30. The law will then be made available through the media to the Iraqi people for public discussion before it is made final.

The debate on the law will go on simultaneously with an evaluation by a U.N. team of the country’s readiness for elections. The U.N. is widely expected to conclude that the country is too unstable and lacks the administrative framework to hold a vote in the next few months, as demanded by some top Shiite Muslim clerics and their followers.

Shiites constitute the majority of Muslims in the country.

Pachachi made it clear at a news conference Saturday that the governing council views the U.N. assessment as advisory, not binding.

“The U.N. will make recommendations, not decisions,” Pachachi said. “It’s only a recommendation. We have the right to accept it or reject it and make the final decision.”

Pachachi also announced that Iraq would restore the Defense Ministry, which was dissolved by U.S.-led authorities because the ministry was viewed as an apparatus of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

In the face of unrelenting criticism of that decision by many Iraqis, the United States began opening a way for some soldiers to return to their positions and instituted a pension program.

Now U.S. authorities and the Governing Council have decided to reinstate the ministry, though it remains unclear how many former employees will be able to return to their jobs.

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Stack reported from Mosul and Rubin from Baghdad. Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell and Edmund Sanders and researcher Salar Jaff in Baghdad contributed to this report.