A suicide car bomber targeted offices of Iraq's former prime minister and a Sunni lawmaker yesterday, speeding toward a checkpoint outside the buildings and killing two guards just outside the fortified Green Zone.
Meanwhile, in the US, growing numbers of Americans think the US is making progress in Iraq and will eventually be able to claim some success there, a poll showed yesterday in a sign the politics of the war could become more complicated for Democrats.
The bombing took place in western Baghdad, less than 150m from a series of buildings that included offices of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's first post-Saddam prime minister and a secular Shiite, and those of Saleh al-Mutlaq, the head of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, a Sunni bloc. Neither was at the offices at the time of the explosion.
Al-Mutlaq, speaking from Amman, in neighboring Jordan, said when the suicide bomber reached the first checkpoint "he claimed that he was an employee and had access."
The offices are in a residential neighborhood, but many of the homes were converted to work spaces because it is convenient to the Green Zone, where the Iraqi government has its headquarters.
"I turned this house into an office for the Front after all my offices were attacked before," al-Mutlaq said.
He said the attack was yet another demonstration that "it is time to rebuild the police and army."
Elsewhere in the capital, drive-by gunmen on motorcycles fatally shot the head of Iraq's largest psychiatric hospital as he was returning home from work, police and health ministry said yesterday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal.
Ibrahim Mohammed Ajil, believed to be in his 50s, was the head of al-Rashad hospital, Iraq's largest and well-known mental institution, which lies on the outskirts of the sprawling Sadr City district of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the government's national security adviser has said Iraq will never allow the US to keep permanent military bases on its soil.
"We need the United States in our war against terrorism, we need them to guard our border sometimes, we need them for economic support and we need them for diplomatic and political support," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said.
"But I say one thing, permanent forces or bases in Iraq for any foreign forces is a red line that cannot be accepted by any nationalist Iraqi," he said, speaking to Dubai-based al Arabiya television in an interview broadcast late on Monday.
Meanwhile, a poll showed yesterday that growing numbers of Americans think the US is making progress in Iraq and will eventually be able to claim some success there.
About three-fourths of respondents describe themselves as worried about what's happening in Iraq and nearly six in 10 say they are angry -- slight reductions since February, but still strong majorities harboring negative feelings on the eve of an election year. Most Democrats and independents -- joined by sizable numbers of Republicans -- say they are worried, tired, even angry.
People are most positive about recent gains in security in Iraq.
The poll showed a nearly even division over whether US President George W. Bush's troop increase this year has helped stabilize the country, with 50 percent saying no and 47 percent yes. Just three months ago, only 36 percent said yes.
Forty-two percent said they think history will consider the war mostly a success. While more -- 55 percent -- said they think it will be judged a failure, those numbers were rosier than in September when 59 percent said they felt that way.
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