Thu, Mar 30, 2006 page7

• Gunmen kill eight in Iraq

  • AP AND NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Unidentified gunmen opened fire in a trading company in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood yesterday, killing eight employees and wounding six, police said.

  The men, some in police uniform, arrived at the al-Ibtikar Trade Contracting Co in five black BMWs at about 8:15am, police Lieutenant Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said. Those killed included five men and three women, he said.

  The motive of the attack in west Baghdad's Mansour district was not clear. The assailants burned part of the building and didn't appear to have taken any money, Abdul-Razzaq said.

  

  Iraqi soldiers guard the Baghdad street where 16 employees of an Iraqi trading company were kidnapped on Monday.

  PHOTO: AP

  Those who survived the attack told police that the gunmen identified themselves as Iraqi Interior Ministry intelligence agents.

  Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed by sectarian killers as well as death squads operating inside the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry since the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine set off a wave of revenge. Usually, the victims are killed secretively, their bodies discovered hours or days after the attack.

  Another trading company in Mansour was targeted earlier this week by gunmen who abducted 16 employees. They wore military uniforms and masks and showed up in four civilian cars at the headquarters of the Saeed Import and Export Co Police said the kidnappers went through papers and computer files before leaving with their captives, al-Mohammedawi said.

  In yesterday's attack, survivors said the gunmen first asked where the manager was, but he was not in the office. They then apparently gathered the victims together and shot each of them before fleeing, police said.

  Meanwhile, senior Shiite politicians said on Tuesday that the US ambassador had told Shiite leaders to inform the Iraqi prime minister that the Bush administration did not want him to remain the leader of Iraq in the next government.

  It is the first time the Americans have directly intervened in the furious debate over the country's top job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the US and some Shiite leaders.

  The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the head of the main Shiite political bloc at a meeting last Saturday to pass a "personal message from President [George W.] Bush" on to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who the Shiites insist should stay in his post, said Redha Jowad Taki, a Shiite politician and member of parliament who was at the meeting.

  Khalilzad said that Bush "doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept" Jaafari to be the next prime minister, according to Taki, an aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc. It was the first "clear and direct message" from the Americans on the issue of the nominee for prime minister, Taki said. A spokeswoman for the US embassy declined to comment directly on what Khalilzad discussed in his meeting on Saturday, though she confirmed the ambassador did see Hakim.

  A spokesman for Jaafari said the prime minister had heard of the message through officials in his party, and accused the Americans of trying to subvert Iraqi sovereignty and weaken the Shiite ranks.

  "How can they do this?" said Haider al-Ubady, the spokesman. "An ambassador telling a sovereign country what to do is unacceptable."

  "The perception is very strong among certain Shia parties that the US, led by Khalilzad, is trying to unseat Jaafari," he added.

  Tensions between Shiite leaders and the US government, which had been rising for months, have reached a crisis point following an assault on Sunday night by US and Iraqi forces on a Shiite mosque in northern Baghdad. Shiite leaders say at least 17 civilians were killed in the battle, mostly political party members, while US commanders say those killed were insurgents.

  The embassy spokeswoman, Elizabeth Colton, confirmed that Khalilzad and Hakim had met on Saturday, as they regularly do to discuss Iraq's precarious political situation.

  "The decisions about the choice of the prime minister are entirely up to the Iraqis," she said. "This will be an Iraqi decision."

  Any push by the US government against Jaafari's nomination would be another sign of the White House's acute impatience over the deadlocked talks to form a four-year government.
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