8 die in blast at Iraq school ministry

BAGHDAD -- Until yesterday, Iraq's Ministry of Education had remained untouched by the car bombs that erupt daily here. Insurgents had said the place was off-limits because of the benevolent mission of the ministry, and they may have been deterred by the buildings clustered around it: a high school, a primary school, and a kindergarten.

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When a BMW sedan detonated outside the ministry at 9:30 a.m., killing at least eight people, those running fastest to the crater in the middle of the street were parents.

"I saw three cars were burning, and I saw all the glass of the windows was broken, and I saw the schoolmaster of the primary school telling the pupils to go home," said Mustafa Khateeb, 34, who was summoned from his university workplace by his sister, whose son was in the primary school. "The children were crying and screaming."

Meena Abdul Qader, 13, was in a classroom at the Hariri High School for Girls when the windows blew in and smoke filled the building.

"I saw five students in the classroom next door injured by the glass, but I don't know what happened to them because I ran away to my house," she said.

Twenty people were wounded in the attack, according to a spokesman for the Interior Ministry of Iraq's interim government.

In the northern city of Mosul, another car bombing killed four members of the Iraqi National Guard. That attack, which targeted a military convoy carrying an Iraqi general, was carried out by an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq, according to a statement posted on a militant Islamist website.

A group of Iraqi militants holding aid worker Margaret Hassan threatened to turn her over to the Al Qaeda group unless Britain withdraws its troops from Iraq.

The Al Qaeda group was known as Monotheism and Holy War until its Jordanian leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden last month.

The satellite news channel Al-Jazeera said the threat was contained in a new videotape which the station declined to air because it is distressing. The station did not elaborate. Britain's Press Association news agency quoted Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland as saying it shows Hassan fainting while pleading for her life. Ahern, who had read a written summary of the video, said her abductors threw water over her head, and she is seen lying on the ground weeping.

Hassan, born in Ireland and married to an Iraqi, has lived in Baghdad for 30 years. She is the country director for CARE International.

"Margaret has no political associations," Ahern told Ireland's Parliament. "She represents nobody but the vulnerable and the poor. Your quarrel is not with Margaret. Nor is it with the Irish people, who have been a firm friend of the Arab nations."

The Zarqawi group has cultivated a reputation for brutality. Yesterday the group posted video footage of the beheading of Shosei Koda, the Japanese backpacker whose body was recovered in a field last week wrapped in an American flag. Japan's government had rebuffed demands to withdraw the 550 troops it has in southern Iraq doing reconstruction work.

US Embassy officials said they had no word about an American civilian kidnapped from a Baghdad house at dusk Monday. The unidentified man was abducted along with a Nepalese, a Filipino, and three Iraqis by at least a dozen attackers. Two of the Iraqis, who had been working as guards, were found tied and blindfolded elsewhere in Baghdad yesterday, news services reported.

"No one's claimed responsibility or made any demands," an embassy spokesman said.

Saboteurs attacked two oil installations in the country's north. The damage will cut off exports from that part of the country for 10 days, news services quoted officials as saying.

One attack damaged a pipeline used for export. A second explosion targeted the Ghabaza oil field southwest of Kirkuk. Last week, insurgents in Fallujah had threatened to sabotage Iraq's oil infrastructure if their demands for cheap gasoline were not met.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.