Bombers Infiltrate Iraqi Ministry, Kill 16

Two suicide bombers wearing explosive belts killed at least 16 police officers in an audacious attack on the Iraqi Interior Ministry on Monday during a ceremony to honor Iraqi police.

Attending the ceremony were U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the Iraqi ministers of Interior and Defense, and other officials. They were unharmed.

Meanwhile, Iraqi and U.S. security forces were searching for an American female journalist abducted over the weekend. Jill Carroll, a freelance writer on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor, was taken in broad daylight by armed men in Sunni-dominated western Baghdad. Her interpreter was killed.

Monday’s suicide attack at the Interior Ministry occurred in the middle of the day. The bombers, dressed in police uniforms -- one as a major and the other as a lieutenant colonel -- flashed their badges at lower-level police security officers and were able to walk far into the vast Interior Ministry compound without being searched, ministry sources said.

The facility is set up to ensure high security. It sits in an otherwise empty lot and the road leading to it is closed to traffic. Visitors who walk in are usually body-searched at least twice before they reach the main gate nearest the building, where police conduct a third search.

Large numbers of people were streaming in at the time to attend the Police Day celebration, and 25 were injured in the bombing.

Although suicide bombers have often struck at members of the police and Iraqi army, Monday’s attack may have been designed to send a message to ministry employees.

Iraqi and U.S. officials say some of them have tortured prisoners and made arrests without charge. Sunnis in particular have been targets of police brutality, which many view as having been approved by the minister, Bayan Jabr, who previously was a leader of the Badr Corps, a Shiite militia trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

In November, a raid by the U.S. military on a detention center run by the police found more than 100 prisoners, most of them Sunnis, some with marks of torture and some malnourished. A second clandestine prison was raided soon thereafter. The incidents prompted criticism of Jabr’s administration and widespread calls for reform of the Interior Ministry.

At Monday’s ceremony, however, Khalilzad praised the police and said the force was “moving forward towards living up to its full potential as provider of security to Iraq’s neighborhoods and upholding the rule of law.”

“As the insurgency is neutralized, the police will be the key instrument to deal with terrorists and criminals.... Police operating under the rule of law are also vital ... to preserving an environment conducive to international investment,” Khalilzad said.

Many areas of Baghdad and its surrounding provinces remain dangerous, as do most routes leading into the capital.

The journalist kidnapped Saturday was snatched close to where the city’s farthest suburbs merge into the scrub desert.

Carroll, 28, an Arabic speaker, has reported from the Middle East for Jordanian, Italian and other news organizations for three years. She is the 36th journalist to be kidnapped since April 2004 and the first American woman. Of those kidnapped, six have been killed.

Carroll’s reporting recently focused on the political concerns of Sunnis, many of whom live and work on the west side of Baghdad. In a statement, the Christian Science Monitor said it had hired Carroll for “her professionalism, energy, and fair reporting on the Iraqi scene. It was her drive to gather direct and accurate views from political leaders that took her into western Baghdad’s Adil neighborhood on Saturday morning.”

Carroll was abducted as she, her interpreter and driver left the headquarters of the Iraqi People’s Congress, a Sunni political party, said an official of the Interior Ministry. She went to the party’s office on Saturday morning for an interview with the party’s chief, Adnan Dulaimi, who is one of Iraq’s leading Sunni politicians. But when she arrived, he was already miles away at a scheduled media event with other politicians.

Mohammed Ubaidi, a party official, spoke to the journalist when she arrived for the interview.

“She didn’t meet anyone because Dr. Adnan Dulaimi was having a press conference elsewhere,” he said. “I called him and it was decided to postpone the meeting till 12 o’clock. Then I told her about the new appointment ... she said she would come [back] at noon.”

As she was leaving, her car was intercepted by five or six gunmen, said her driver, who escaped the attack.

“I was confronted by a group of unidentified men with machine guns, five or six of them, they shouted at my car and they were in front of me forcing me to stop,” the driver said in an interview with The Times.

“They got into my car [and] drove away,” continued the driver, who said he was dragged from the car. “They tried to shoot me again, so I ran as fast as I could.”

“It was very obvious this was by design,” the driver said in an article about the incident published on the Christian Science Monitor’s website Monday night. “The whole operation took no more than a quarter of a minute. It was very highly organized. It was a setup, a perfect ambush.”

During the abduction, the gunmen loosed a volley of bullets. When they left, the body of interpreter Allan Enwiyah, 32, was lying in the street. He had been shot execution-style, with two bullets in his head.

More than 250 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq over the last two years, including aid workers, truck drivers, diplomats and journalists. Two of the slain have been foreigners, an Italian and an American, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The risks to Western journalists have grown greater in the last year as fewer and fewer Westerners in Iraq venture outside heavily guarded, walled compounds, making those journalists who still work outside more visible and vulnerable.

Under pressure from danger, fatigue with the story and the high costs associated with maintaining a presence in Iraq, the foreign press corps has shrunk dramatically since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In the days after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, more than a thousand foreign journalists poured in. Today, they number fewer than 100.

Richard Bergenheim, editor of the Monitor, appealed to Carroll’s abductors to let her go immediately.

“Jill’s ability to help others understand the issues facing all groups in Iraq has been invaluable,” he said.

“We are urgently seeking information about Ms. Carroll and are pursuing every avenue to secure her release.”

As of Monday night, no one had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.