A suicide car bomb killed an Iraqi Shiite legislator and three others near Baghdad as they were headed to parliament yesterday.
Separately, more than 1,000 US troops and Iraqi forces launched Operation Sword in a bid to crush insurgents and foreign fighters in western Iraq, making it the third major offensive in the area in recent weeks.
The military campaigns, however, have not been able to capsize a bold insurgency that has killed more than 1,350 people -- mostly civilians and Iraqi security forces -- since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-dominated government on April 28.
PHOTO: AP
National Assembly Legislator Dhari Ali al-Fayadh and his son were killed in the suicide attack while traveling to parliament from their farm in Rashidiya, 35km northeast of Baghdad, said parliamentarian Hummam Hammoudi, who heads a committee charged with drafting a new constitution.
The attack occurred on the one-year anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqi authorities. Al-Fayadh, in his late 80s, was the eldest member of the new parliament that was installed about three months ago and he had acted as speaker until one was elected.
Elsewhere yesterday, a suicide car bomber slammed into a convoy carrying Kirkuk traffic police chief Brigadier General Salar Ahmed, killing one of his bodyguards and a civilian in the northern city, police Lieutenant Assad Mohammed said. Four were wounded, including Ahmed and three of his bodyguards. The oil-rich city of Kirkuk is 290km north of Baghdad.
The new US-led military campaign is focusing on communities along the Euphrates River between the towns of Hit and Haditha in the volatile Anbar province, said Marine Captain Jeffrey Pool, a spokesman. The US troops include Marines, soldiers and sailors from Regimental Combat Team 2, which is part of the 2nd Marine Division.
The region, about 200km northwest of Baghdad, is a hotbed of insurgent activity. Operation Sword, or Saif in Arabic, comes on the heels of two other offensives -- dubbed Operations Spear and Dagger.
Operation Spear was aimed at stemming the flow of foreign fighters over the porous Syrian border in Karabilah, which is near the Iraqi frontier town of Qaim. The US military said nearly 50 insurgents were killed during the five-day operation.
Meanwhile, Police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa yesterday, wounding seven protesters, including one man who was shot in the head, witnesses and hospital staff said.
Four policemen were also injured by stones, doctors said.
Nearly 2,000 unemployed Iraqis were demonstrating in central Samawa because they had not been given jobs in the police in Samawa, 270km south of Baghdad.
Protesters threw stones and police opened fire, first with warning shots and then shots aimed into the crowd, reporter Hamid Fadhil said from the scene.
Photographer Mohammed Amin said he saw four demonstrators wounded, one of them hit by a bullet to the head.
Raad Selim, a doctor at Samawa's main hospital, said that man was one of two fighting for his life. A further five civilians had gunshot wounds.
Of the four policemen hit by stones, two were in a serious condition, Selim said. Two ambulances were badly damaged by the stone-throwing protesters.
Foreign troops, apparently from British or Australian units which operate in the area of southern Iraq, observed the violence from the roof of a local government building.
There was no sign of Japanese troops, 550 of whom operate from a base in Samawa, conducting civil reconstruction work.
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