- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- Guerrillas
fired rockets at the city hall building in Mosul on Saturday, killing two
people and wounding 13, in another deadly attack on Iraqis working with
U.S.-led occupation forces.
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- Colonel Shamil Ahmad, head of the city hall police department,
said a child and two police were among the wounded. He said at least three
attackers launched two Katyusha rockets, which hit the outer blast walls
protecting the building.
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- Guerrilla attacks in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north
of Baghdad, have killed several people this month including four U.S. missionaries
shot dead in their car.
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- In another incident in the city on Saturday, police fought
a shoot-out with a criminal gang that had stolen 62 million dinars ($44,000)
in money for government salaries. A policeman and a robber were killed,
and two gang members captured, police said.
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- In Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, a three-year-old
boy died on Saturday after being wounded by U.S. troops who opened fire
on a car, police and hospital officials said.
-
- "There was a family -- four children, three women
and their driver," an Iraqi police major said. "The U.S. forces
fired on them and all of them were injured. One child was killed."
-
- A spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division in Tikrit said
troops had opened fire on a car that failed to stop at a checkpoint, adding
that four people had been wounded.
-
- In Baghdad, a roadside bomb wrecked a passing vehicle,
wounding at least five Iraqis. Gunfire erupted after the blast. The explosion
targeted a large four-wheel drive vehicle, similar to those used by the
U.S. military and foreign security firms.
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- Shattered glass and a bloodstained cigarette packet lay
on the seats of the vehicle after the attack.
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- Improvised bombs concealed along roads in Iraq have been
the deadliest weapon in the arsenal of guerrillas fighting the occupation,
killing scores of U.S. soldiers over the past year.
-
- Since the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam, 400 U.S.
troops have been killed in action in Iraq.
-
- TENSION IN FALLUJA
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- The latest to die was a U.S. Marine killed on Friday
in fierce fighting that raged for much of the day in the flashpoint town
of Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.
-
- At least seven Iraqis were killed in the fighting, including
a cameraman working for U.S. network ABC. Doctors at Falluja's hospital
said many civilians had been caught in the crossfire.
-
- Marines sealed off several roads leading in to Falluja
on Saturday and said they were continuing combat operations there.
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- In the city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad,
where ethnic tensions between Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and Assyrian Christians
have at times boiled over into violence, unidentified gunmen killed an
Assyrian police lieutenant in an attack on Friday evening.
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- In a separate incident in the city, U.S. soldiers killed
an Iraqi working with U.S. organization RTI International and wounded two
others after mistakenly opening fire on their car, a senior police official
said. RTI is an organization hired by USAID to help establish local governance
across Iraq.
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- On Friday, a United Nations team of electoral experts
arrived in Iraq to advise on polls due to be held in early 2005.
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- Washington's hopes of winning support for its political
plans have been dented by opposition from Iraq's most revered Shi'ite cleric,
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
-
- Sistani, who wields great influence over Iraq's 60 percent
Shi'ite majority, says a U.S.-backed interim constitution signed by the
Iraqi Governing Council earlier this month is flawed and undemocratic.
-
- One of Sistani's followers in Kuwait told worshippers
on Friday that the cleric may declare that the Iraqi government that takes
power on June 30 is illegitimate -- a move that would cause many Iraqi
Shi'ites to reject it.
-
- "If Article 61 of the interim constitution is not
changed, Imam al-Sistani may issue a fatwa declaring illegitimate all those
to whom power is transferred in June," Kuwaiti newspapers quoted Ayatollah
Mohammad Baqer al-Mohri as saying.
-
- Sistani "may also order the Iraqi people to protest
or carry out major popular demonstrations and sit-ins in all Iraqi cities,"
the newspapers quoted him as saying at Friday prayers.
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- Article 61 has several clauses, but the most controversial
one is that even if a majority of Iraqis approve Iraq's permanent constitution
in a referendum, it can be vetoed if two-thirds of voters in three provinces
reject it.
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- The clause was demanded by Iraq's Kurds, who want guarantees
that their right to autonomy in northern Iraq will not be removed. But
Sistani has said it is undemocratic as it allows a minority of Iraqis to
dictate to the majority.
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