Twenty-one Iraqis were killed by insurgent attacks in northern Iraq on Sunday, bringing to more than 70 the death toll in a three-day spree of violence that has affirmed the resilience of the insurgency less than two months before scheduled elections.
In the worst attack, 17 Iraqis employed by the government died when two civilian buses in which they were traveling to work were ambushed by gunmen near the northern city of Tikrit, according to the U.S. military. The Iraqis were employed at an ammunition disposal dump, officials said.
Seven attackers climbed out of two vehicles and fired AK-47 assault rifles “until they ran out of ammunition, then fled the scene,” said Capt. Bill Coppernoll, a spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division.
The continuing violence prompted a UN official to cast doubts on the viability of the election scheduled for Jan. 30.
In a bleak assessment, the top UN envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, said he does not believe the vote could happen unless “first and foremost, security improves.”
“The situation does not work. We have to find something which does,” he told the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
“It is a mess in Iraq,” he said.
Political leaders who gathered in Baghdad on Sunday, mostly Sunni Arabs, agreed that the insurgents’ campaign of violence makes credible elections impossible for now, and said that holding them in January would produce discredited results that could set off more civil conflict.
“I warn the two sides that the situation is very serious,” said Tawfik al-Yassri, a member of Iraq’s interim parliament and a leader of the Iraqi National Coalition party. “It will be the first seed of civil war.”
The comments coincided with a weekend of bloodshed that has dashed any hopes that the offensive against insurgents in Fallujah last month had “broken the back” of the insurgency, as a U.S. commander said at the time.
The past three days have witnessed a surge of violence targeting Sunni worshipers, Kurdish militia and Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul.
An Iraqi soldier died Sunday and four were wounded when their patrol was attacked in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
Near the town of Bayji, also north of Baghdad, three Iraqi soldiers were killed and 18 were wounded by a car bomb that targeted their checkpoint.
On Friday, a Baghdad police station was attacked and 16 men were killed. On Saturday, suicide car bombs hit another police station, killing eight, and a bus carrying Kurdish militiamen, killing seven.
At least four U.S. soldiers have been killed since Friday. Two were slain Saturday during a patrol in Mosul’s Palestine neighborhood when they came under fire from insurgents firing from two mosques and other buildings in the area, according to spokeswoman Capt. Angela Bowman.
The U.S. military and Iraqi forces later raided a mosque and detained three suspects.
Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility for several attacks Friday and Saturday.
Fallujah also remains unstable, and on Sunday the Iraqi Red Crescent pulled out of the city, citing the danger there. The Red Crescent entered the devastated city last week to aid civilians living there. But U.S. Marines in Fallujah are still encountering pockets of resistance daily.
Insurgents have replenished their stocks of weapons since the Fallujah offensive by overrunning police stations in several cities, including Mosul and Baghdad.
U.S. forces supply the new Iraqi security forces, which commanders acknowledge have been penetrated by insurgents.
