Bomber Kills 47 Outside Mosque

A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of funeral mourners gathered outside a Shiite Muslim mosque Thursday, killing at least 47 people.

The blast, which tore through the large group packed in a tent next to Two Sadr Martyrs Mosque, was the latest in a string of recent attacks that have killed at least 100 Iraqis, most of them civilians.

Earlier on Thursday in Baghdad, two police commanders were assassinated in separate ambushes and gunmen killed four cloth merchants, apparently because they sold fabric to be used for Iraqi army uniforms.

The violence illustrates the resilience and nationwide reach of the insurgent campaign. It comes at a time of flux marked by a lame-duck interim government and a public increasingly frustrated by the protracted talks to form a new one, nearly six weeks after elections were held Jan. 30.

The two largest political blocs, a unified Shiite Muslim slate and a Kurdish coalition, Thursday appeared close to a deal that would give them the votes to form a government, although key issues remained unresolved.

The Mosul attack occurred during memorial activities for Sayyid Hashem Araji, a Shiite religious leader and imam at the mosque. He died Monday.

The tent was packed with people paying their respects when the bomber struck around 5:30 p.m. Survivors said the blast occurred just as dinner was to be served, when the crowds were heaviest.

“I saw bodies lying on top of each other, most of them blown into small pieces,” mourner Zeinal Ibrahim said. “Many of them were my friends, and I knew they had been taken into God’s mercy.”

Survivors dragged bodies away and large bloodstains were visible on the ground outside the wide canvas tent.

The rush of casualties overwhelmed medical facilities in Iraq’s third-largest city. Local TV stations and mosques called for blood donations. Officials at Mosul’s Republican Hospital placed the death toll at 47, with at least 81 wounded.

U.S. forces have engaged in intensive efforts with Iraqi military personnel to capture insurgent leaders in the city. In a series of commando-style raids and attacks on homes and meeting places believed used by the rebels, commanders say they have killed or captured hundreds in the last several months.

“This wasn’t expected, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected, either,” said Capt. Duane Limpert of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team). “You can have success after success after success against the insurgency, but it only takes one terrorist success to make a very big deal. They only need to get it right just once.”

Mosul, a multiethnic city north of Baghdad, has long been a tinderbox for violence between rebels and U.S. and Iraqi forces. Last fall, insurgents routed much of the police force and established control over portions of the city.

Since then, neighborhoods have seesawed between insurgent and U.S. control, and American forces so far have refrained from carrying out the kind of large-scale assault they launched in Fallouja and Najaf, which engendered public outrage.

Mosul is a mix of Sunni and Shiite Arabs, ethnic Kurds and Turkmen. It was one of the strongholds of the Baath Party of former President Saddam Hussein.

Though Shiites constitute a majority in Iraq, they are in the minority in Mosul. Shiite mosques, religious celebrations and political leaders have been targeted in the rest of the country by the predominantly Sunni insurgency, but Mosul had largely been spared.

Shiite religious leaders, including the powerful marjaiyah elite headed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, have long appealed for patience and counseled their followers against retaliations that could spiral into civil war. But in the wake of the Mosul bombing, some Shiites issued a call to arms.

The mosque’s name, Two Sadr Martyrs, refers to the father and uncle of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. Both were influential religious leaders believed to have been assassinated by Hussein’s agents. Some of the mourners Thursday called for the younger Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia to rearm and protect Iraq’s Shiite communities. The militia laid down its weapons last year, ending months of on-and-off hostilities with U.S. and Iraqi forces.

“The government should give [the Al Mahdi] weapons and let them play a role in Mosul,” Sheik Taher Abdullah Tamimi said. “How else can we protect ourselves?”

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, gunmen ambushed Lt. Col. Ahmed Abeis, chief of the Salhiya police station. He was shot and killed along with his driver and bodyguard when insurgents opened fire on his pickup truck as he was heading to work about 7 a.m. Fellow officers said Abeis usually drove to his post with relatively little protection.

The Salhiya station is in central Baghdad, between the Foreign Ministry and one of the main entrances to the heavily fortified Green Zone, and it bears the marks of numerous car bombings.

Officers there vowed to pursue and capture the killers.

“There are still a few terrorists out there, but we will catch them all,” Saddam Koudair said. “What happened today encourages us even more, and the blood of our police chief will not be forgotten.”

In a separate attack, gunmen killed Col. Iyad Abdul Razaq, chief of the Jisr Diyala police station in southeast Baghdad.

Attacks on police officers, soldiers and military interpreters have become grimly routine. But insurgents now seem to be expanding their focus to anyone working even indirectly with the government or security forces.

State-run Al Iraqiya television Thursday reported the slaying of four cloth merchants in their shops near Baghdad’s Rasheed Street market. Witnesses said the gunmen walked into the shops and opened fire on the proprietors.

“They say it’s because they sold” to the Iraqi national guard, a witness told Al Iraqiya.

The latest attacks came a day after the disclosure that at least 45 bodies, including those of women and children, had been found in mass graves near the border with Syria and south of Baghdad.

On the political front, the two largest slates in the newly elected National Assembly continued talks to form a government. Members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a largely Shiite Muslim slate, and several politicians with the Kurdish slate said the groups had agreed that the transitional administrative law, which the government now follows, would be the guide for future policy on some of the nation’s most contentious issues.

This is particularly important to the Kurds, who favor the policies put forth in the TAL relating to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The law backs the right of return for those who were pushed out of their homes or off their land by Hussein’s “Arabization” policy in the 1980s and ‘90s. Exercising that right will be easier said than done because in many cases Arabs have moved in and put down roots.

The TAL also spells out that religion will be a source of law but not the only source, which reassures secularists that Iraq will not become an Islamic republic overnight.

The Kurds, aware that they will be the minority in any governing coalition, want to ensure that they will have sufficient power to help shape policy.

Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd, said his slate was insisting on “legal guarantees which forbid the misuse of power by anyone, party or sect.”

According to the Saudi newspaper Al Watan, Salih also said the Kurds wanted the relationship between the central government and the Kurdish region clearly spelled out. The Kurds have operated a virtually independent government in northern Iraq for 10 years. They want to retain a number of ministries so they can to continue to have full control of services.

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Morin reported from Mosul and Khalil from Baghdad. Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad and a special correspondent in Mosul contributed to this report.