'We've been having several Londons a day in Iraq'

From Ireland
22/07/2005
07:19:33
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Iraq has asked the UN Security Council to condemn the recent spate of bombings and attacks.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been having several Londons a day in Iraq for some time,” Iraq’s deputy UN ambassador Fesial al-Istrabadi said yesterday, referring to the bombing or attempted bombing of three tube trains and a bus twice in the past two weeks.

Hours after the first attacks on July 7, which killed 52 people and four suspected suicide bombers, the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the attacks and demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice.

Al-Istrabadi said he believes “there is great will on the part of the Security Council to acknowledge the horror that the people of Iraq have been living through – and in fact condemn it.”

He cited the nearly 100 people killed in Saturday’s massive bombing in Musayyib, 40 miles north of Baghdad, and other attacks including the July 13 car bomb in Baghdad that killed27 Iraqis and one American soldier.

Iraq’s UN Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie handed a letter seeking the council’s condemnation of the violence to Greece’s UN Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis, the current council president, yesterday.

Al-Istrabadi said Iraq would like the council to approve a resolution condemning the latest violence, and “at the least” a presidential statement from members which has somewhat less clout.

Meanwhile, gunmen seized two Algerian diplomats yesterday – including the country’s top envoy to Iraq – in the latest attacks aimed at scaring away Muslim diplomats and undermining the US-backed Iraqi government.

The abductions brought to five the number of key diplomats from Islamic countries targeted in Baghdad in less than three weeks. The top Egyptian envoy was reportedly killed after being captured, and two apparent kidnapping attempts against diplomats were foiled.

Thechief of Algeria’s mission in Iraq, charge d’affaires Ali Belaroussi, and another Algerian diplomat, Azzedine Ben Kadi, were dragged from their car along with their driver in west Baghdad’s upscale Mansour district, police and Algerian officials said.

Belaroussi, a career diplomat, has been in Iraq for about two years, and served as financial director at Algeria’s embassy in Paris from 1997 to 2002, Algerian officials said.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari pledged to increase security for diplomats but warned them to avoid going to dangerous areas. The Mansour district has been the site of a number of kidnappings, including that of Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and Briton Kenneth Bigley. All three were later killed.

Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Al-Khafaji told Al-Jazeera television that the Algerian envoy had refused Iraqi offers to provide him with bodyguards, saying he didn’t need protection because “Algeria’s relationship with the Iraqis is good.”

No group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of the Algerians.

A total of 49 countries or entities have some form of diplomatic representation in Iraq, including 18 Arab or non-Arab Muslim countries, according to Iraq’s Foreign Ministry and country Web sites.

Elsewhere, at least 17 people were killed in insurgent attacks, including two suicide car bombings against Iraqi security forces. The US command said an American sailor died of wounds suffered last week in Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad.

The death brought to at least 1,773 the number of US military members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.