الرئيسية
Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (C) arrives to
attend the opening ceremony of Baghdad's International Fair November 1,
2011.REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud
By Reuters
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi authorities said on Friday a rare
attack inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone this week was
carried out by a suicide bomber in a car and may have targeted the
country's prime minister.
Reports a suicide bomber was able to
penetrate the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and other embassies as
well as parliament and some ministries, raised questions about security
just as the remaining American troops leave Iraq.
The attack took place a day before a visit by Vice President Joe Biden to Iraq's capital.
Baghdad
security operations official, Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, said
intelligence pointed to an attempt to target Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki or some other top political leader, but he said the
investigation was still ongoing.
It was not clear if anybody
other than the attacker was killed in Monday night's blast, which
officials initially said was a mortar round. Rockets and mortar rounds
occasionally land on U.S. bases and inside the Green Zone.
Moussawi
said the bomber was driving a black, four-wheel drive vehicle carrying
20 kg (44 lb) of locally manufactured explosives, which had been placed
close to the tank.
"Intelligence shows the suicide bomber aimed
to enter the building of the parliament and to stay in one of the
parking lots until the prime minister ... arrived at the parliament," he
said.
He showed a video of a black vehicle approaching a
checkpoint outside the parliament building, then backing off, before an
explosion outside the building. But he showed little evidence as to how
the bomb was to have targeted Maliki.
Violence in Iraq is down
sharply since the peak of sectarian slaughter here in 2006-2007, but
Sunni Islamists tied to al Qaeda and rival Shi'ite militias, some backed
by Iran, still carry out almost daily bombings, attacks and
assassinations.
The remaining 12,000 U.S. troops are due to leave
in a few weeks, nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Sunni
dictator Saddam Hussein and allowed the country's Shi'ite majority to
ascend in power.
Many Iraqis worry that without the buffer of a
U.S. presence, sectarian tensions could rise again. The admission that a
suicide bomber entered the Green Zone as the U.S. hands over security
may fuel tensions among the country's fragile power-sharing coalition of
Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish political blocs.
Supporters of
Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni, have already said he could
have been the target of an attempted assassination. He is a political
rival of Maliki, a Shi'ite leader.
(Reporting by Waleed Ibrahim; Editing by Patrick Markey and Alessandra Rizzo)