Baghdad Car Bomb Kills Four
 

AP


A car bomb exploded in central Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least four people, according to both police and witnesses.

The blast sent a large column of gray smoke rising over buildings on the east bank of the Tigris River.

A police officer at the scene said the car exploded at Tahrir Square, a commercial area in the heart of the city, and seemed to target a U.S. military patrol that was passing through the area.

The officer and several witnesses said at least four people were killed. It is not clear at this point if there have been any American casualties.

Also Thursday, an insurgent video surfaced showing gunmen shooting to death four blindfolded men who identified themselves as Iraqi policemen from a special task force.

The footage, which was obtained by Associated Press Television News, has a date stamp on the video indicating it was recorded on Feb. 3.

It is not clear where the policemen, if that is in fact who they are, were captured.

Insurgents ambushed a police convoy on Feb. 3 in the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing one policeman and kidnapping a number of others.


In other developments:


Iraq will close its borders for five days, from Feb. 17 until Feb. 22, to try to avoid violence during a major Shiite religious holiday. Last year, 181 people were killed during simultaneous suicide attacks on Shiite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala.


Gunmen killed Abdul Hussein al-Basri, an Iraqi journalist working for the U.S.-funded television station Al-Hurra, and his son as they left their home Wednesday in Basra. The TV station is aimed at Arab audiences to compete with Arabic channels including Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. Some Muslim clerics have denounced the TV station as propaganda.


In Iraq's oil-rich north, saboteurs set off explosives Wednesday at a gas pipeline in Fatha district, 15 miles north of Beiji, setting it on fire. One policeman was injured as workers put out the blaze, which was expected to affect the production of electricity. Officials did not say how long it would take to repair the pipeline.


In Rome, the newspaper that employs an Italian journalist held hostage in Iraq said Wednesday that it has indications she is alive and that intelligence officials have established indirect contact with the kidnappers. Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter for communist daily Il Manifesto, was abducted Friday by a group of gunmen outside Baghdad University. Conflicting claims have appeared on Islamic militant Web sites: One said she had been killed, while another said she would soon be released.


Election workers continue to count ballots for the 275-member National Assembly, 18 provincial councils and a regional parliament for the Kurdish self-governing region in the north. Votes from about 300 ballot boxes must be recounted, delaying the announcement of the final results of the Jan. 30 balloting, an election commission spokesman said Wednesday. The commission had expected to announce final results of the balloting on Thursday. But spokesman Farid Ayar said that the Thursday deadline would slip due to the need for a recount. "We don't know when this will finish," he said. "This will lead to a little postponement in announcing the results."


The 127 Portuguese police serving in Iraq are returning home Thursday after completing their planned 15 months of duty, officials said Wednesday. The contingent halted its patrols in the southern city of Nasiriyah soon after Iraq's Jan. 30 national elections and since then have been preparing for the withdrawal, according to Tavares Belo, a spokesman at Lisbon police headquarters.


The political horse-trading on the makeup of the new Iraqi government is well underway even though the final results of the Jan. 30 national elections have yet to be announced.

None of the 111 candidate lists is likely to end up with the two-thirds majority needed to make key decisions, so much of the face of the new Iraq - at least in the coming transition period - will be molded by alliances and deals.

Partial returns point to a victory by the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated coalition tacitly endorsed by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Leaders of the alliance, who have likely won the biggest bloc of seats in the incoming 275-member National Assembly, are now focusing on whom to back for prime minister.

The assembly will elect a largely ceremonial president and two deputies, who in turn will choose the prime minister. The assembly then ratifies the choice.

U.S.-backed interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who leads a rival ticket, is believed to be seeking to hold onto the position. But partial returns show his party trailing both the Shiite ticket and a coalition of major Kurdish parties.

The United Iraqi Alliance has said it wants the prime minister's job, and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani has announced his candidacy for president. The Shiite coalition is made up of Shiite religious parties and other political groups that include some Sunnis and Kurds.

Francis Brooke, an adviser to United Iraqi Alliance member Ahmad Chalabi, said that Chalabi, of the Iraqi National Congress party; Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Dawa party; and Abdel Abdul-Mahdi, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, are all seeking the alliance's nomination for the position of prime minister.

But the alliance's key strength - its diversity - is perhaps its weakness, too.

Abdul-Mahdi and al-Jaafari come from Islamic-oriented parties with close links to Iran. Chalabi is a secular-minded Shiite and former ally of the Pentagon who later fell out of favor with Washington.

The alliance's diversity increased its appeal beyond Iraq's religious Shiite community. But because the ticket brought together competing parties, some predict the coalition could fray after the National Assembly convenes.

Much depends on whether the alliance votes as a bloc and seeks outside allies, possibly the Kurds, to beef up its dominance in the chamber.

Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, a former member of the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council and a candidate on the alliance list, said it is "possible but not probable" that the ticket will split.

Many Sunnis stayed away from the balloting after the Sunni militants who drive the insurgency threatened violence and others called for a boycott to protest holding elections under "foreign occupation."

The low Sunni turnout helped give the Shiites and Kurds a huge lead.