Attacks on Perceived Collaborators Kill 19 Iraqis

Attacks apparently targeting Iraqis perceived as cooperating with the United States killed a general and at least 18 other people and wounded at least 24, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Friday. A Marine was killed and two American soldiers reportedly were among the wounded.

Maj. Gen. Suleiman Mohammed, who commanded an Iraqi national guard division in the southern city of Basra, was assassinated Friday in Baghdad as he and his two sons were driving to a funeral, a source in the Iraqi government said. The assailants, firing from another car, also killed one of the general’s sons and wounded the other.

The Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq claimed in an Internet statement to have carried out the assassination, Reuters news agency reported.

This morning, the U.S. military announced that a Marine assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action Friday in Al Anbar province. No details were given.

On Thursday, suicide bombings killed at least 10 Iraqi police officers in the cities of Ramadi and Iskandariya. In addition, five women employed as cleaners at a U.S. Army base near Baghdad were gunned down as they drove home from work.

The killings in Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, appeared to signal sharp sectarian tensions in an area where the population is almost entirely Sunni Muslim Arab. To keep order and hunt insurgents, the Iraqi government has sent in national security forces often made up of Kurds or Shiite Arabs from southern Iraq who are resented by the fiercely independent and deeply tribal residents.

The Ramadi attack targeted a checkpoint manned by Iraqi national guardsmen and police, said 1st Lt. Ali Salem of the Al Anbar provincial police. Americans with the 2nd Marine Division were nearby but not at the spot where the bomber detonated his vehicle.

“All the ... casualties are not natives of Anbar; rather, they are from the south of Iraq,” Salem said. He put the death toll at 14, but the U.S. reported only six.

The U.S.-led multinational force issued a statement saying a vehicle had approached the checkpoint about 7 p.m. and the bomber detonated explosives. Army Staff Sgt. Don Dees said an investigation was underway. He would not comment on injuries to U.S. personnel, but Reuters reported that two American soldiers, along with nine Iraqi police officers and three civilians, were injured in the blast.

The incident followed an attack earlier in the week on six Iraqi policemen patrolling an area between Ramadi and the nearby city of Fallouja, noted Mohammed Jarnan, a prominent figure in the Golan neighborhood of Fallouja. He and others said they had been treated disrespectfully by security forces from elsewhere in Iraq.

The six officers were killed “while they were on patrol because they made some lewd remarks to some woman.... People have to protect their honor,” he said.

Col. Shaker Dulaimi, Anbar’s police chief, indicated the depth of concern over the presence of outsiders on Thursday when he announced he was ready to deploy 6,000 local police officers across Anbar after receiving complaints from tribal chiefs and other leaders about the attitude of the police and national guard forces that are made up mainly of Shiite Muslims from the south.

In the Iskandariya attack, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, a bomber blew up his car near an Iraqi army convoy. The explosion killed four soldiers and wounded nine civilians and soldiers, Reuters reported.

The five women shot to death Thursday were from the same family, including three sisters in their 30s and 40s and the daughters of the two eldest sisters. All worked at Rustamiya, a military base south of Baghdad known to Americans as Camp Cuervo, said a co-worker who asked not to be identified for fear of becoming a target as well.

Witnesses said the youngest sister was driving her family members home in the early afternoon and had nearly reached the first house, in the Baghdad suburb of Mashtal, when two cars approached. Masked men in black opened fire with automatic weapons, then one got out of his vehicle to shoot each victim with a pistol, the co-worker said.

The attack was reminiscent of two assaults last year on vehicles carrying female Iraqi workers to and from U.S. camps.

Like those, the latest attack appeared to be directed against those perceived as collaborating with occupation forces. But the victims in last year’s slayings were Christian, and those attacked Thursday were Sunni Muslim. The women’s family was linked to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

The co-worker said the husband of the eldest sister had been a member of Hussein’s Baath Party and was killed shortly after the U.S. occupation began in 2003. Two surviving sisters work for the U.S. base as interpreters, but they may now quit their jobs, the co-worker said.

One of the dead women also had a daughter working as an engineer in the fortified section of Baghdad known as the Green Zone, he said.

He described the slain women as well-liked and kind.

“They didn’t deserve to be killed in such a savage way,” he said.

A special correspondent in Ramadi contributed to this report.