Bombs Kill at Least 15 in Baghdad

Two nearly simultaneous explosions ripped through two eateries Thursday afternoon, killing at least 15 people, while the deadline for the execution of a kidnapped journalist approached with no new word from her captors.

Just before 3 p.m., a parked car exploded on Saadoun Street, Baghdad’s main commercial boulevard, in front of the popular Madhaaq restaurant, where patrons dine behind an expanse of windows with a view of the street.

The blast occurred just as a police convoy passed. At almost the same time, a suicide bomber walked into a popular tea shop just around the corner and set off his explosives belt, police said.

A police spokesman said 15 people were killed, including three officers, and 46 were wounded. The injured were treated at three Baghdad hospitals.

The bombers eluded heightened security ordered in anticipation of the release as early as today of final tallies in the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. U.S. military officials had expected a surge in violent attacks linked to the event.

Also Thursday, the mother of Christian Science Monitor correspondent Jill Carroll made an impassioned plea for her daughter’s release. Carroll was abducted and her interpreter was slain Jan. 7 as they left the office of a Sunni Muslim Arab political organization.

Her kidnappers said Tuesday in a statement read on Al Jazeera television that Carroll would be killed today unless all women detained by U.S. authorities were freed.

Appearing calm during a CNN interview, Mary Beth Carroll appealed to the captors’ sense of responsibility and respect. She said the kidnappers “picked the wrong person” because her daughter “has worked so hard to show the sufferings of Iraqis to the world.”

“Jill has always shown the highest respect for the Iraqi people and their customs,” Carroll said. “We hope that her captors will show Jill the same respect in return. Taking vengeance on my innocent daughter, who loves Iraq and its people, will not create justice.”

She added: “To her captors, I say that Jill’s welfare depends upon you. And so we call upon you to ensure that Jill is returned safely home to her family, who needs her and loves her.”

The U.S. military Thursday disputed a report by Iraqi officials that six women would soon be released from U.S. detention.

“There is no specific indication that we’re going to release any individual female, particularly in response to a demand by a terrorist or a criminal,” Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said at a briefing.

An official in the Iraqi Ministry of Justice had said the cases of six of the eight women in detention came up for review this week and they would be released for lack of evidence.

“This has nothing to do with the kidnapped journalist,” a ministry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Los Angeles Times.

U.S. officials said they were perplexed by the reports. Washington has a frequently stated policy of not negotiating with terrorists.

Lynch said 14,000 detainees are in U.S. custody, fewer than 10 of them women. Since August 2004, a commission of Americans and Iraqis has reviewed 26,000 cases and ordered the release of about half.

“As we look at the details of the females who are detained, in accordance with the normal process, some of them may be released,” Lynch said.

Later, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, an Army spokesman, said he could not say whether any of the women’s cases had been reviewed because of the commission’s rules on public disclosure.

As the deadline drew near, influential Iraqi Sunni leaders rallied to Carroll’s cause Wednesday, condemning hostagetaking.

“We reject this act,” said Adnan Dulaimi of the Iraqi Accordance Front party, the Sunni leader Carroll had attempted to interview before her abduction. “It is absolutely condemned. We will do as much as possible to release Jill.”

Dulaimi, who was not at his office when Carroll went there, had been silent on the incident. He said Wednesday that by speaking out now, he was exposing himself to danger.

Similar denunciations of the captors came from leaders of the Muslim Scholars Assn. and the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, who said the kidnapping hindered their goal of removing the U.S. military from Iraq.

Meanwhile, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) visited U.S. troops in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone on Thursday and told reporters he had said to Iraq’s leaders that it’s “crunch time” to form a “national government of unity” that can rise above sectarian differences.

“This must be a year of profound, fundamental and significant transformation here in Iraq,” Kerry said.

An international monitoring team issued a report Thursday saying it found numerous violations and instances of fraud during the December election. But it did not challenge the validity of the returns or endorse minority parties’ demands for a new vote.

As Iraq’s election commission prepared to announce complete returns today, the Interior Ministry said it was deploying additional security forces to prevent violence by the Sunni-led insurgency. Shiite Muslim parties dominating the interim government were expected to take nearly half the seats in the new parliament.

Iraqi officials agreed to the inquiry by the International Mission for Iraqi Elections, a 10-nation body led by Canada, to placate Sunni and secularist party members who said they had been cheated out of votes.

The group’s report cited evidence of the kind of irregularities those parties had denounced -- ballot-box stuffing and theft, tally-sheet tampering, intimidation, incorrect voter lists, ballot shortages, multiple voting and illegal campaigning at polling centers.

It said many serious complaints “were properly investigated and judiciously resolved” by Iraq’s election commission, which nullified returns from about 1% of the ballot boxes.

“Some additional fraud in all probability went undetected, although its exact extent is impossible to determine,” the report said.

The monitors urged Iraq’s parties to put the fraud issue behind them and work to meet “an urgent need for a formation of a government of true national unity.”

The death toll from Wednesday’s violence continued to climb as new incidents were reported, bringing the count to more than 60 over 48 hours.

In Al Anaz, a town west of Fallouja, witnesses said gunmen staged a brazen public execution, shooting three people they accused of being criminals.

The gunmen, who did not attempt to conceal their identities, dragged three men into the marketplace and condemned them as robbers, looters and assassins. They said the men were defaming the insurgency and then shot them.

It remained unclear Thursday whether bodies found in a heavily Sunni Arab area about 40 miles north of Baghdad were those of police officers kidnapped from a bus this week or victims of a killing spree.

There were unconfirmed reports of as many as 30 bodies clad in civilian clothes but carrying police identification.

Other reports said that motorists forced off the main highway by the wreckage of an American helicopter that crashed this week were being stopped and killed at phony police checkpoints.

Mehdi Khalil, a security official at a hospital in Dujayl, said he saw men in police and army uniforms Tuesday taking money from motorists and pulling them out of their cars.

“They left two corpses on that road so that anyone passing there sees them,” Khalil said.

Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baghdad and Taji contributed to this report.