Kirkuk Blast Kills10 , Rumsfeld Assesses ‘Security’

Police Sergeant Mohammad Mortada said two people drove up to the station in a white Oldsmobile and blew up the vehicle, packed with nails and50 kilograms ( 110pounds) of TNT, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Reuters reported that the attack killed 13 people and wounded51 , while the AP said that al least 10 were killed.

The explosion occurred at 8 : 30am ( 0530GMT) as 400 policemen changed shifts, said the station chief, Colonel Adel Zain Al-Abadin Ibrahim.

Dr. Hashem Mohammed of the city’s Azadi hospital put the number of policemen killed at seven, along with the two bombers who were completely incinerated by the blast.

Another 45 people were wounded, all but 10 of them policemen, said the city’s police chief, Turhan Youssef.

As in past such attacks, there was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Ibrahim said two men had been arrested near the station and brought in for questioning.

The explosion in the Kurdish Rahimawa neighborhood was the latest in a string of deadly attacks this month against U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces.

Some 47 Iraqis perished in a car-bomb attack at a Baghdad recruitment center for the New Iraqi Army on February 11 a day after a bombing at a police station south of Baghdad killed up to 50 people.

At least 250 Iraqis have been killed so far in February2004 , making it the bloodiest month in Iraq since the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein in April2003 , the interior ministry said Monday.

Meanwhile, the brother of a high-ranking Iraqi security official in the town of Samarra , 125 kilometers ( 80miles) north of Baghdad , was shot dead on Monday, medical sources said.

“Unknown attackers opened fire at 9 : 00am ( 0600GMT) on Othman Aziz Mohammad, hitting him in the head as he was on duty in the town’s truck station,” said the head of the local hospital, Abdel Tufiq.

The 30 -year-old victim was a member of the U.S.-trained Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, which is headed in Samarra by his brother, Colonel Ahsan Aziz Mohammad.

Rumsfeld Back
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was met at Baghdad airport by U.S. civil administrator Paul Bremer after flying in from Kuwait on his fourth visit to the region since U.S.-led forces occupied Iraq last April.

Bremer then flew by helicopter with the defense secretary to a forward operating base of the2 nd Light Cavalry Regiment on the east side of the capital, AFP said.

Rumsfeld was briefed on plans to reduce the U.S. military presence in Baghdad , shrinking the number of troops inside the city from36 , 000to24 ,000 by May15 , and the number of bases in the capital from 48 to eight.

Replacing them will be12 , 000Iraqi police and seven battalions of the civil defense corps, Brigadier General Martin Dempsey told Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld observed that the Iraqi security forces will soon reach the226 ,000, a force larger in number at least than any other contingent of the U.S.-led occupation here.

U.S. military officials, however, acknowledged that the Iraqis are still far from being fully trained or equipped for their mission.

Bremer told reporters traveling with Rumsfeld that attacks like the one in Kirkuk aimed at “disrupting U.S. plans to shift greater weight for security to Iraqi forces”.

“It is certainly the same method of operation and it certainly suggests the terrorists are targeting these security forces because as the Zarqawi letter makes clear, that’s one of his prime targets,” he said.

Bremer was referring to a captured letter attributed to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian believed to have ties to Al-Qaeda.

Amid the almost daily attacks on U.S. troops, Rumsfeld held talks with occupation and military officials about the troubled transition to Iraqi sovereignty.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said last week that it was not feasible to hold elections before June30 , when the U.S. occupation forces should hand over power to a provisional Iraqi government.

But Annan told reporters that the June 30 date Washington had fixed for a transfer of sovereignty “must be respected”.

Bremer, however, said Saturday, February21 , that elections would be impossible to be held for at least one year, setting the stage for another clash with the Iraqis demanding a swift end to occupation of the oil-rich country.