| Bomber kills 27 as US hands over Karbala to Iraq |
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AFP Photo
Iraqi soldiers raise their weapons as they celebrate. The US military has transferred the Shiite holy province of Karbala back to Iraq as a suicide bomber killed 27 policemen in an attack on their headquarters in the restive city of Baquba.
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KARBALA, Iraq (AFP) - The US military on Monday transferred the Shiite holy province of Karbala back to Iraq as a suicide bomber killed 27 policemen in an attack on their headquarters in the restive city of Baquba.
Karbala became only the eighth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be handed over to local forces by the US-led coalition.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who addressed the handover ceremony, blamed his own military leaders for slow progress in taking back control of the country's war-ravaged provinces.
"Allow me to say that we are late, very late, to reconstruct, to rebuild our forces for reasons that I do not want to mention here," said Maliki who is under pressure from Washington to rebuild his forces faster.
The delay in rebuilding Iraqi forces has hampered US plans to withdraw its forces from the country.
"We demand that the military and police leadership make more efforts to reconstruct and rebuild the security forces in order to take over control of the rest of the provinces," Maliki said.
"These provinces are waiting to be secured by their own sons once again."
Washington and Baghdad had hoped that Iraqi forces would take control of most of the provinces this year, and had even declared 2007 the "Year of Security" in Iraq.
But a US congressional report in September said Iraq was 12-18 months away from assuming complete security control, largely because of a corrupt police force.
The report by Marine General James Jones, the former top US commander in Europe, said Iraqi forces were improving "but not at a rate sufficient to meet their essential security responsibilities."
America's top officials in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus, said the handover of Karbala was a "positive step towards Iraq's self-reliance."
In a joint statement they said the transfer was an indication of the country's ability to "develop and assume greater responsibility for governing and providing security for the citizens."
Karbala, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Baghdad, is relatively peaceful compared to some other central and western regions of Iraq, but is emerging as a flashpoint of Shiite rivalry.
Home to the shrines of two of Shiite Islam's most revered imams -- Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas -- Karbala was the site of a bloody firefight in August during a major religious festival in which at least 52 people were killed.
The other Iraqi provinces handed over by US-led forces to date are Maysan, Muthanna, Dhi Qar and Najaf in the central and southern regions and the three northern Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah.
Maliki on Monday said Iraqi forces would take control of the southern province of Basra, currently under the control of around 5,200 British troops, in mid-December.
His security concern was highlighted on Monday when a suicide bomber riding a bicycle blew himself up at police headquarters in Baquba, the restive city northeast of Baghdad.
Brigadier General Kudair al-Timimi of Baquba police said the blast killed 27 policemen and wounded another 21 people, including 18 policemen.
Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, is one of the most dangerous regions in Iraq, where US and Iraqi forces are waging a continuing campaign targeting insurgents, especially Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Insurgents have stepped up attacks in Diyala in recent days and the bombing comes a day after 11 tribal leaders from Diyala were kidnapped in Baghdad.
The US military said on Monday the tribal chiefs were kidnapped by Arkan Hasnawi, a rogue militant leader who had broken away from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
The 11 were seized in Baghdad's northern neighbourhood of Al-Shaab which has a strong Shiite militia presence, a security official said, adding the tribal leaders were from a local movement opposing Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In recent months the US military has been supported by tribal leaders and by nationalist former insurgents in its fight against Al-Qaeda in Diyala.
The bombing took the overall Iraqi death toll in Otcober to more than 330, but this is still one of the lowest since February 2006.
An attack on the Al-Askari shrine in the central city of Samarra that month sparked a wave of brutal sectarian bloodletting that has killed tens of thousands.
The violence peaked in January this year, when 1,992 deaths were reported.
US and Iraqi commanders have hailed the declining casualty toll as proof of the success of a joint crackdown on sectarian militias launched in and around Baghdad in February this year.
© AFP 2010
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