- MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Guerrillas
killed nine people in a car bomb blast outside a police station in the
Iraq city of Mosul on Saturday, and a separate bomb attack on a U.S. convoy
north of Baghdad killed three American soldiers.
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- Police and hospital officials in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles)
north of Baghdad, said 44 people were wounded in the car bomb attack, which
sent debris flying more than 300 meters (yards) and left body parts littering
the scorched ground.
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- Thick smoke billowed from blazing vehicles and windows
across a wide radius were shattered.
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- Major Hugh Cate, spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division
in Mosul, said there were no U.S. casualties.
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- The U.S. military said three U.S. soldiers were killed
when a roadside bomb blew up next to a convoy traveling between Kirkuk
and Tikrit, the hometown of ousted leader Saddam Hussein 175 km north of
Baghdad.
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- Major Josslyn Aberle said the attack involved soldiers
from the 4th Infantry Division and occurred southwest of Kirkuk.
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- The deaths brought to 364 the number of U.S. soldiers
killed in action since the start of the Iraq war last March. Including
non-combat deaths, the toll is 522.
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- The attacks came on the eve of the Muslim holiday of
Eid al-Adha. Guerrillas have often struck on significant dates -- a car
bomb destroyed a Baghdad restaurant on New Year's Eve, killing eight, and
on October 27, the first day of Ramadan, coordinated suicide attacks in
Baghdad killed at least 35.
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- U.N. GO-AHEAD
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- Despite the violence, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
has said experts will arrive within days to assess the feasibility of elections
before a June 30 deadline for the handover of sovereignty from the U.S.-led
coalition to an Iraqi government.
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- U.N. international staff left Iraq last year after suicide
attacks on its headquarters in Baghdad, including one on August 19 that
killed 22 people, among whom was head of mission Sergio Vieira de Mello.
-
- The U.N. electoral team will spend several weeks traveling
the country to assess how possible it would be to hold a free and fair
national poll.
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- U.S. authorities in Iraq have said they will listen to
U.N. recommendations, but the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan
Pachachi, said on Saturday no one would necessarily be bound by any advice
the U.N. offers.
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- "The U.N. will make recommendations, not decisions,"
he told a news conference. "It's only a recommendation, we have the
right to accept or reject it, and to make the final decision."
-
- The United Nations is returning at Washington's request,
after U.S. plans for the handover of sovereignty were rejected by Iraq's
leading Shi'ite cleric.
-
- The initial plan was for regional caucuses to select
a transitional assembly by the end of May. The assembly would then pick
a government to take over sovereignty by end-June.
-
- But Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, revered by much of Iraq's
60 percent Shi'ite majority, has said the new government should be directly
elected.
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- Washington, and many members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi
Governing Council, say that is not possible as there are no voter rolls
and security remains precarious.
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- Separately, Iraq said it would attend security talks
with neighboring states in Kuwait mid-February, opening a chapter in diplomatic
and international ties.
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- Iraq did not attend similar talks last November in Syria,
focusing on regional stability and border security.
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- (Additional reporting by C. Bryson Hull in Tikrit
- © Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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