Car Bomb Kills Four in Fallouja

FALLOUJA, Iraq — A pickup truck stuffed with explosives blew up Tuesday near a police station in this volatile town, killing at least four people and injuring seven others in the fifth deadly bomb attack in two days.

The blast came as U.S. officials said one of Baghdad’s deputy mayors had been assassinated in a drive-by shooting and that a soldier with the Army’s 1st Armored Division had died in a rocket-propelled-grenade attack in the capital.

Deputy Mayor Faris Abdul Razzaq Assam was gunned down outside his home Sunday after returning from Madrid, where he had attended a conference of donors who pledged funds to rebuild Iraq.

“Faris was ... a visionary, driving force in the effort to institute a new democratic government in Baghdad and Iraq,” said Hank Bassford, regional coordinator for the U.S.-led occupation administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority. A coalition spokesman said he had no information that any suspects had been apprehended.

In the wake of the violence, members of the Iraqi Governing Council again called on the coalition authority to hand over responsibility for security to Iraqis, saying that tougher measures were needed. The council’s security committee met late Monday, after four suicide bombers attacked the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross and three police stations in Baghdad, killing at least 35 people and injuring 224. A fifth attack was foiled by Iraqi police who shot and captured the would-be bomber.

It was unclear whether Tuesday’s bombing in Fallouja was a suicide attack. People on the scene offered conflicting reports about whether the bomber was killed in the blast or walked away from the Toyota before it exploded.

If the latter turns out to be the case, it would contrast with the suicide bombings in Baghdad, which U.S., Iraqi and British officials said were probably carried out by foreign fighters. Tuesday’s violence may have more in common with previous assaults on police stations in the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad, which are widely believed to have been committed by supporters of the former Saddam Hussein regime.

In Fallouja, on the Euphrates River about 35 miles west of Baghdad, the newly reconstituted Iraqi police are widely viewed as collaborators with the Americans. They have been attacked repeatedly with rocket-propelled grenades, and in some cases assassinated.

But this was the first car bomb, and Fallouja residents reacted with anger and distress, accusing Americans and Iranians of perpetrating the attack.

“They are criminals, saboteurs, we don’t know where they have come from,” said Sumaya Jassam Hameed, 57, whose leg was badly cut in the blast. She lay in a bare hospital room, surrounded by upset relatives.

“This is the first bomb of its kind,” said Abid Salih Sallum, 39, her son-in-law. “The people of Fallouja accuse the Badr Brigade for this.” The Badr Brigade, a Shiite Muslim militia backed by Iran, waged a limited guerrilla war against the Hussein regime.

The precise target of Tuesday’s blast was unclear because the broad street where the explosion occurred is home to several government facilities, including an electricity station, an Education Ministry building and the police station. The explosion was so powerful that it tossed the body of one person onto the roof of a nearby school and scattered limbs, metal and flesh nearly 500 yards.

Members of the coalition authority and the Iraqi Governing Council said they believed Monday’s bombings had been carried out by foreign fighters. Council members advocated stronger security measures and said Iraqis should deal with suspects, rather than having to turn them over to the Americans.

Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s special representative in Iraq, told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Tuesday that foreign fighters, possibly drawn to Iraq from Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world, appeared to be behind the bombings in Baghdad. He predicted that the violence would continue.

“It is going to go on through the winter, probably,” he said. “We have to accept that this is a cost and keep going with something that is really worth doing.”

Mouwafak Rabii, a member of the council, said he doubted that those behind Monday’s blasts were supporters of the former regime. “I cannot believe someone would kill himself for Saddam Hussein,” Rabii said. “These suicide bombers are brainwashed, indoctrinated and definitely coming across the border.”

Rabii and fellow Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi called on the coalition authority to coordinate far more closely with Iraqis.

“We need to be tougher,” Rabii said. “We need to go and seek them out. Also, we have to be brutal -- I should say ‘less kind.’ Because if we don’t kill them, we will get killed or the people of Iraq will get killed.”

A spokesman for Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress faction praised the Iraqi police but said their hands were tied on investigations. Entifad Qanbar noted that Iraqis turn over terrorism suspects to the Americans and said it should be the other way around.

Much of the responsibility for the investigation of Monday’s bombings was in the hands of U.S. authorities, said Baghdad’s police chief, Maj. Gen. Hassan Ali Ubaydi. He released the name of the alleged would-be bomber, Hassan Abdullah, and said the suspect was recovering after surgery and had been turned over to the U.S. military. He is one of 120 Syrians in custody in Iraq.

“How strange is the concept of killing oneself and also innocent people in this sacred month of Ramadan. That is not the real Islam. These people are terrorists trying to destroy our tolerant religion,” Ubaydi said, adding that security at police stations had been increased since Monday’s attacks.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Tuesday that a rocket-propelled-grenade attack Monday had killed a U.S. soldier and wounded six others in Baghdad as they were destroying makeshift bombs.

On Tuesday, a soldier with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division died near Fallouja of a non-hostile gunshot wound, the military said.

In Mosul, a northern city that has been relatively quiet, four Americans were wounded Tuesday when two patrols were ambushed, and an Iraqi newspaper editor was slain by gunmen. Ahmed Shawkat, who had worked as a stringer for The Times, had received letters warning him to close his independent paper, his daughter told Associated Press.

U.S. spokesmen also said Tarik Aziz, foreign minister in the Hussein regime, has been under medical supervision by American doctors at a detention facility where he has been held since surrendering. Aziz, who is diabetic and has a history of heart problems, is in stable condition, they said.