Iraq security officials targeted

BAGHDAD - Sunni extremists appear to have begun a systematic campaign to assassinate police chiefs, police officers, and other Interior Ministry officials throughout Iraq, with at least 10 attacks in the last 48 hours.

Eight policemen have been killed, among them the police chief of Baqubah in Diyala Province. There were assassination attempts on two other police chiefs that left one of them in critical condition. About 30 police officers have been injured during the attacks, according to reports from local security offices.

"We warned the government just a few days ago that there is a new plan by terrorist groups to target senior governmental officials, and particularly Interior Ministry officials," said Major General Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister for information and national investigations.

"It seems that the terrorists' plan has already started, and this explains the incidents that happened recently in Kut, Diyala, Kirkuk, and Mosul," he said.

In addition to the four areas mentioned by Kamal, local security forces reported attacks against the police in Samarra, Basra, and Fallujah.

The campaign of attacks was announced on an Islamist website on Sept. 15 just two days after the killing of a Sunni Arab leader of the tribal Awakening Council, which has begun to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group whose leadership has foreign ties, according to American intelligence officials.

The Sunni extremists said they would begin a new series of attacks to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The most lethal attack occurred Monday evening in Diyala when a man wearing a suicide vest walked into a reconciliation meeting at a Shi'ite mosque in Shifta, a suburb of the provincial capital, and detonated his vest as several hundred people were drinking tea after breaking the traditional daylong Ramadan fast, according to an American military report.

The police chief of Baqubah, Brigadier Ali Dlyan, was killed along with 11 other police officers, two of whom were senior members of the force. The total number of dead climbed yesterday, but there was some uncertainty about that number, with the American military saying that 24 had died and 37 had been wounded. But Diyala health officials believe the death toll was somewhat lower; they said that they received 18 bodies and that the Baqubah hospital received 27 wounded.

The governor of Diyala province, who was injured in the attack, was saved from death by his bodyguards, who saw the bomber making for the governor and threw themselves on top of him. All five of his bodyguards died, and the governor had to be dragged from underneath them, said a provincial official in Diyala who rushed to the scene to help with the rescue, but asked not to be identified.

In Diyala yesterday, the bodies of three policemen were found.

In Basra, a suicide car bomber attacked the police headquarters during the morning check-in, killing three people, including a policeman, and injuring 17 police officers.

In the northern city of Mosul yesterday afternoon, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt attacked Colonel Abid Hamid, the police chief of Abu Tamam, an area of Mosul, while he was conducting a field visit to one of the district's fuel stations, said Brigadier Said al-Jbouri, the police media officer for Nineveh Province. The police chief was reported to be in critical condition.

"The main reason behind all these attacks is the signs of improvement of the security situation mentioned in the Crocker- Petraeus report," said Tahseen al-Sheikhly, a spokesman for the Iraqi security forces, referring to the report by the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and General David H. Petraeus on the increased levels of the American and Iraqi troops in Baghdad and surrounding areas.

"The terrorist groups are just trying to say to the world that the report did not reflect the reality of the security situation in Iraq," Sheikhly said.