Baquba lost Police Chief @ Iftar Explosion in Mosque

BAGHDAD, Sept 24 (Reuters) -

BAGHDAD, Sept 24 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 20 people and wounded 30 when he blew himself up inside a mosque compound in the Iraqi city of Baquba on Monday, police said.

The dead included the police chief of Baquba and two other senior police officers.

A suicide bomber killed the police chief of the Iraqi city of Baquba and two other senior officers when he blew himself up inside a mosque compound on Monday, police said.

Police said other people were killed and wounded in the attack, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, but they had no details. The wounded included tribal leaders.

The bomber entered the compound while senior police officers and tribal leaders were attending a meal to mark the breaking of the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan, police said.

They named the police chief as Brigadier-General Ali Dulayyan. Two other police brigadier-generals were also killed.

Baquba is the capital of volatile Diyala province.

Diyala has been the scene of several U.S. and Iraqi offensives in recent months aimed at combating al Qaeda in Iraq militants who had overrun parts of the province, including Baquba. U.S. commanders say the operations have helped improve security.

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Bomber strikes Sunni-Shiite meeting By LAUREN FRAYER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Sep 24, 4:10 PM ET



BAQOUBA, Iraq - A suicide bomber struck a U.S.-promoted reconciliation meeting of Shiite and Sunni tribal sheiks as they were washing their hands or sipping tea Monday, killing at least 15 people, including the city's police chief, and wounding about 30 others.

Two U.S. soldiers were also wounded in the 8:30 p.m. blast at a Shiite mosque in Baqouba, a former al-Qaida in Iraq stronghold about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, who gave the overall casualty toll.

The brazen attack, which bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, represented a major challenge to U.S. efforts to bring together Shiites and Sunnis here in Diyala province, scene of some of the bitterest fighting in Iraq.

About two hours after the blast, U.S. soldiers at nearby Camp Warhorse fired artillery rounds at suspected insurgent positions near Baqouba. There were no reports of damage or casualties.

Witnesses and officials said the bomber struck when most of the victims were in the mosque courtyard cleaning their hands or drinking tea during Iftar, the daily meal in which Muslims break their sunrise-to-sunset fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

Security guards approached a man after noticing him walking rapidly through the courtyard. As the guards challenged him, the man detonated an explosive belt, setting off the devastating blast, said police Maj. Salah al-Jurani.

Al-Jurani said he believed provincial Gov. Raad Rashid al-Tamimi was the intended target. The governor was wounded and his driver was killed, al-Jurani said.

The dead also included Baqouba's police chief, Brig. Gen. Ali Dalyan, and the Diyala provincial operations chief, Brig. Gen. Najib al-Taie, according to security officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.

Also wounded was the governor's brother, Sheik Mazin Rashid al-Tamimi, who has spearheaded Sunni-Shiite reconciliation efforts in the province.

"We've tried to persuade the tribes to oust terrorists from their areas because it's a disaster when the tribes cooperate with and provide refuge to al-Qaida," Sheik Mazin told The Associated Press last weekend.

U.S. officials have accelerated efforts to reconcile Sunni and Shiite tribes in Diyala after American soldiers gained control of Baqouba, the provincial capital, in fighting last summer. Al-Qaida had declared Baqouba the capital of its Islamic State of Iraq.

The U.S. announced this month that top leaders of 19 of the 25 major tribes in Diyala — 13 Sunni and six Shiite — had agreed to end sectarian violence and support the government, although the province remains one of the most dangerous in the country with frequent kidnappings and armed clashes.

The effort is loosely modeled on an alliance of Sunni tribes which banded together last year to fight al-Qaida in Anbar province. The leader of that effort, Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, was killed in a bombing Sept. 13.

Also Monday, an American soldier was killed by hostile fire in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. No further details were released.

To the north, Iran shut down five major border crossing points into Kurdish areas Monday to protest the U.S. arrest and detention of an Iranian official accused by the U.S. military of links to an elite force smuggling weapons into this country to kill Americans.

Crossing points elsewhere along the 900-mile border were operating normally.

Iran's semiofficial Mehr news agency said the closures were to protest the arrest last Thursday of Mahmudi Farhadi, an Iranian regional official who was detained by American troops at a hotel in Sulaimaniyah, a Kurdish city 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.

The border stations will remain shut until Farhadi's unconditional release, the Mehr agency quoted Ismail Najjar, general governor of the Iranian Kurdistan province, as saying.

U.S. officials said Farhadi was a member of the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that smuggles weapons to Shiite extremists in Iraq. But Iraqi officials say he was here legally and should be set free.

In New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the AP that the border closure was intended to protect religious pilgrims and that "commercial goods and freight transactions continue."

However, a Kurdish merchant from Sulaimaniyah said he had three trucks loaded with construction materials stuck on the Iranian side of the border near Panjwin. "They didn't allow them to cross, they closed the gate," Khalid Aman Sulaiman said.

Merchants and officials said hundreds of trucks were backed up on the Iranian side and no goods were being allowed across.

"We are paying the price for the U.S.-Iranian struggle in Iraq," businessman Rashid Saleh complained as he fretted over his shipment of Iranian dairy products stuck under a blazing sun on the Iranian side of the border at Panjwin. "What is our guilt? We have families to feed."

Iran's move appeared aimed in part at driving a wedge between Iraq and the United States at a time of friction between the two countries over the alleged killing of 11 Iraqi civilians by Blackwater USA security guards.

A long-term closure of the border would have a devastating effect on the economy of the Kurdish self-governing region, the most prosperous and stable part of the country.

The Kurds are also the most pro-American community in Iraq, and the U.S. relies heavily on Kurdish politicians as mediators between the Shiite and Sunni Arab communities.

Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the autonomous Kurdish government, said the Iranian move "will have a bad effect on the economic situation of the Kurdish government and will hurt the civilians as well."

"We are paying the price of what the Americans have done by arresting the Iranian," he said.

Last week, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd from Sulaimaniyah, warned in a letter to U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker that Iran had threatened to close its border with Iraq's Kurdish region over the case and demanded Farhadi's release.

In an interview Sunday with the AP in New York, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki complained that Farhadi's arrest was an infringement on Iraqi sovereignty and that his detention was "unacceptable."

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Iraqi truckers kept waiting at Iran borders by Shwan Mohammed
34 minutes ago



BASHMAKH, Iraq (AFP) - Traders in Iraq's northern Kurdish region flocked on Sunday to border posts Iran announced would reopen after a two-week closure but found them still shut, witnesses and officials said.


Queues of trucks formed from early morning at the border points, closed by Iran on September 24 to protest the US arrest of an Iranian national, but by late afternoon traders had given up hope of crossing before Monday.

At Bashmakh, around 130 kilometres (80 miles) northeast of Sulaimaniyah, drivers of around 100 trucks waited for the gates of the most important of five crossings to open but as the day wore on this looked increasingly unlikely.

A similar situation existed at the Haj Umran frontier crossing, said Abdul Wahid Koani, mayor of the nearby frontier town of Joman.

"The merchants went this morning to with their trucks hoping to cross over but the gates were still shut," said Koani.

"But the Iranian side always takes its time," he told AFP. "It could be two days or three hours."

He said later that the hold-up was due to the fact that Iranian officials had failed to arrive to open up the border posts.

"They now will only open on Monday," Koani said.

Iran's semi-official news agency Fars had reported that the border would reopen on Sunday.

"It has been agreed to reopen the borders as of... October 7, 2007" it quoted Iran's Supreme National Security Council's deputy in charge of domestic security, Mohammad Jafari, as saying on Saturday.

According to Kurdistan trade minister Mohammed Raouf, the closure has cost the autonomous Kurdish region one million dollars a day as trucks conveying goods remained stuck at the border.

Tehran had closed its borders with northern Iraq on September 24 following the detention of Mahmoud Farhadi by US forces.

The US military charges that Farhadi is an officer of the Quds Force, the covert operations arm of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards which is accused by American commanders of helping Shiite militias involved in Iraq's bloody sectarian conflict.

Iran and the Kurdish regional government however say Farhadi is a businessman who was part of a commercial delegation visiting Sulaimaniyah.

"After two days of negotiations, it was agreed that Iraq takes necessary steps to control the border and block the penetration of terrorists into the Iranian soil," Jafari said of the results of recent talks with a high-ranking Kurdish delegation in Tehran.

The talks would continue on October 18, he said.

Iran has accused the United States of turning a blind eye to the actions of the local rebels.

Washington also accuses Tehran of fomenting unrest in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

A member of the Kurdish delegation, Nabhan Omar, told reporters in Sulaimaniyah by telephone from Tehran that the opening of the border was for a trial period of 18 days.

"It is a temporary measure and during this time we will try to agree on a mechanism that will allow for a permanent reopening of the border," Omar said.

"It was agreed that neither side would allow their territory to be used by armed groups as a springboard for attacks across the borders."

Omar said it had also been agreed to reopen the Iranian consulate in Arbil which was shut in January when US forces raided the building and arrested five Iranians they said were Quds Force officers.

Another Iranian consulate would be opened in Sulaimaniyah while Iraqi consulates would be opened in Kermanshah and Urmia, two cities in northwestern Iran near the borders of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.