Baghdad hotel bombed

BAGHDAD - A stealthy suicide bomber slipped into a busy Baghdad hotel yesterday and blew himself up in the midst of a gathering of U.S.-allied tribal sheiks, undermining efforts to forge a front against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Four of the tribal chiefs were among the 13 fatalities, police said.

Iraq's prime minister quickly vowed renewed support for Anbar province's tribal leaders after the noontime explosion, which wounded 27 people and devastated the ground-floor lobby of the high-rise Mansour Hotel.

"We are sure that this crime will not weaken the will of Anbar sheiks," Nouri al-Maliki said in a statement.

The stunning strike in the heart of Baghdad, by a killer penetrating layers of security, was one of a wave of suicide and other bombings that killed at least 46 people across Iraq yesterday - another day of unrelenting violence that raised questions about the ability of the reinforced U.S. military to stem the bloodshed.

In northern Iraq, 13 Iraqi policemen died in what the U.S. military described as a furious bomb and small-arms attack by insurgents on a security post shared by police and U.S. paratroops.

In Baquba, north of Baghdad, a week-old U.S.-Iraqi offensive pressed on, street by street, to drive al-Qaeda-linked insurgents from the city's western side. Beginning late Sunday, U.S.-Iraqi forces clashed with insurgents in the central market area, an Iraqi army officer reported.

"It's going to get harder before it gets easier during the search," Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, U.S. commander of the operation, told reporters. "We are going into areas we didn't have the troops to go in before."

The U.S. command reported that two U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in separate attacks in the Baghdad area.

The bomber at the Mansour Hotel, on the west bank of the Tigris River, struck as the lobby bustled with members of news organizations headquartered at the hotel and other guests, witnesses said.

Among them were a group of sheiks associated with the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of Sunni Muslim tribes that have turned against the al-Qaeda in Iraq in a bid to drive them from the western province of Anbar.

Police and security officials said a man wearing traditional Arab garb like the sheiks', complete with headdress, entered the lobby. He was wearing a belt of explosives, packed with nails and metal pellets, said these officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. He approached the sheiks and detonated the bomb.

A police officer based at the hotel identified four tribal leaders killed as former Anbar governor Fassal al Gaood, sheik of the Albu Nimr tribe; Sheik Abdul-Azizi al-Fahdawi of the Fahad tribe; and Sheik Tariq Saleh al-Assafi and Col. Fadil al-Nimrawi, both of the Albu Nimr tribe. Three of al Gaood's guards also were killed, the police officer said.

Another police official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said six of the assembled sheiks were killed.

Gen. Aziz al-Yassiri, a Defense Ministry adviser, also died in the hotel attack, a ministry official said. Asked whether al-Yassiri had been meeting with the sheiks, this official would say only he was on "an official mission."

The purpose of the gathering of tribal chiefs remained unclear.

The U.S. command here has pointed repeatedly to the Anbar group and its opposition to al-Qaeda as an example for other tribes to follow in Iraq. But the Salvation Council reportedly has been riven by disagreements.

In a statement denouncing the bombing, the U.N. representative, Ashraf Qazi, referred to it as a meeting "seeking to resolve differences."

But one government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting also involved sheiks from outside Anbar, suggesting an effort to broaden the tribal anti-al-Qaeda front.

In Anbar, Sheik Jubair Rashid, a Salvation Council member who contended the Mansour meeting involved "former" council members, said they'd been "working secretly" on unspecified matters and had met Sunday with the prime minister.

Police were investigating how the bomber slipped through the Mansour Hotel's security.

"It was a great breach of security because there are three checkpoints, one outside and two inside," said hotel worker Saif al-Rubaie, 28.

Those killed also included a noted Iraqi poet, Rahim al-Maliki, who was interviewing the Anbar sheiks for a documentary film, and a man and his 4-year-old daughter, residents of the hotel, police said.

More than a third of Iraq's national police battalion commanders are now Sunni after a purge of Shiites who had a sectarian bias, Army Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard said yesterday.

Despite improvements in training Iraqis to take over security in Iraq, he predicted it will still be "a couple of years" before Iraqi forces are capable of securing the country by themselves.

Pittard warned against being "in a hurry" to hand over responsibility for Iraq security to local soldiers and police - a handover that U.S. officials have said is key to bringing American forces home.

It was just a few years ago people said Diyala province would be one of the first to go to provincial Iraqi control, he said. But U.S. forces were drawn down, and then the Samarra mosque was bombed, sparking new violence.

But he noted Iraqi forces were taking the lead in some places, such as in Maysan in the south, the province of Muthanna, and in Irbil in the north.

This week, Pittard ends his tour as day-to-day head of the effort to train Iraqi army soldiers, police, national police, border guards, and other security workers.

- Associated Press

EndText