Bomber targeting Iraqi lawmakers kills 2

Two prominent Iraqi lawmakers, including a former prime minister, escaped assassination Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint near their offices here and killed two guards.

Neither former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi nor Saleh Mutlak was in the country. Both condemned the attack as a sign of rampant lawlessness in Iraq despite U.S. and Iraqi claims of greatly improved security.

A statement from Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord party said it was the second attack in two days on the secular Shiite Muslim. The statement said a bomb went off Monday near Allawi’s home, which also serves as his office. “By God’s good grace, no one was hurt,” it said.

“The same enemies set off another bomb this morning at the checkpoint immediately opposite the house . . . thinking he was present,” the statement added.

Leading political and security officials are constant targets of insurgents in Iraq. Since August, two provincial governors have been assassinated. On Sunday, a provincial police commander praised by U.S. officials for standing up to militias and insurgents was assassinated.

Police said several guards were seriously injured in Tuesday’s blast, which occurred in west Baghdad on a street where several lawmakers have homes and offices.

Allawi was appointed prime minister in June 2004 after the fall of President Saddam Hussein and held the job for 10 months. He has survived several attempts on his life, including one in 1978 purportedly carried out by Hussein’s agents. He is a fierce critic of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Shiite-led government, accusing it of abetting sectarianism and letting militias run the country.

This year, Allawi hired a Washington public relations firm to represent him, leading to speculation he was positioning himself for a bid to take charge again if Maliki’s government collapses.

Mutlak is a well-known Sunni Arab politician who heads the Iraqi National Dialogue party. He told Al Arabiya television that the bomber gained access to the street by convincing guards that he worked at one of the offices within the protected area.

“Everyone is vulnerable,” Mutlak said on television from Amman, Jordan.

Like Allawi, Mutlak is a critic of the government. He says it has been infiltrated by militias and is biased against members of the Sunni minority.

“There will not be any results if the political process continues as it is,” he told Al Arabiya, referring to efforts to achieve reconciliation and stem violence.

The attack was likely to heighten sectarian tensions in parliament, which remains too splintered to reach agreement on major legislation aimed at ending ethnic and religious distrust. The pending bills include one to manage Iraq’s oil wealth and another to expand job opportunities in the government for members of Hussein’s formerly ruling Baath Party.

Violence is sharply down since the summer, though. The U.S. military said Tuesday that the number of rocket and mortar attacks in Baghdad dropped to 24 in November from 49 in October.

The decrease is attributed to an increased troop presence and the establishment of so-called concerned citizens groups comprising volunteers who work alongside U.S. and Iraqi security forces. Many are former insurgents or insurgent supporters who have taken a vow of loyalty to the Iraqi security forces.

Risks remain, though, often in unlikely places. On Tuesday, an Iraqi soldier died when a body rigged with a bomb blew up as security forces were removing it from a Baghdad street. Seven Iraqi soldiers and police officers were wounded.

In addition, the United States announced that an American soldier had died of injuries suffered Monday in a suicide bombing. Two other service members were wounded in the attack.

At least 3,888 U.S. military personnel have died since the war began in March 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

tina.susman@latimes.com

Special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.