Mosque blast kills 25 in Iraq

HILLAH (Iraq)—A bomb exploded at the entrance of a Shiite Muslim mosque south of Baghdad Wednesday as worshippers gathered for prayers on the first day of Ramadan, killing at least 25 people and wounding 77, officials said.
The explosion hit the Ibn al-Nama mosque, ripping through strings of lightbulbs and green and red flags hung around the entrance to mark the start of the holy month and ravaging the mosque’s facade. Police believed Wednesday’s blast was caused by planted explosives, spokesman Capt. Muthanna Khaled Ali said.
When the blast hit just before 6 p.m., the faithful had come to the Ibn al-Nama mosque for prayers before returning home to eat the meal that ends the day’s sunrise to sunset fast, Ali said, adding that at least 22 people were killed and 77 wounded.
The attack came five days after a car bomb exploded in a crowded market, killing 10 people, including three women and two children in Hillah, a Shiite town about 60 miles south of Baghdad that has been the frequent target of attacks. Wednesday was the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan for Iraq’s Shiite majority. Sunnis began marking the month a day earlier.
Al-Qaida in Iraq, one of the country’s deadliest militant groups, has called for stepped up attacks during Ramadan — and it previously declared an all-out war on Iraq’s Shiites. The Hillah bombing was the latest in a string of attacks by Sunni-led insurgents that have targeted Shiite Muslims. Thousands of U.S. troops are currently waging two major offensives to try to put down al-Qaida in its strongholds in the mostly Sunni northwest of Iraq.
Hillah is one of the most insurgent-troubled towns of the Shiite heartland in the south. On Feb. 28, a suicide car bomber hit Shiite police and national guard recruits in Hillah, killing 125 people.
US troops have killed 42 insurgents since the start of an operation in western Iraq near the Syrian border aimed at clearing the area of Al-Qaeda fighters.
“Operation Iron Fist continues into its fourth day as approximately 1,000 marines, soldiers and sailors root out Al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists and disrupt insurgent support systems in and around Sadah,” just 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the border, a statement said.
“The official enemy killed in action count is 42 as of today (late Tuesday)”.
The offensive is part of an overall operation called Hunter, which the US military said seeks to deny Al-Qaeda the ability to operate freely in the Euphrates River valley and to prevent terrorists from “influencing the local population through murder and intimidation”.
In Operation River Gate which was launched on Tuesday, around 2,500 troops have been scouring three towns along the river, west of Baghdad.
A combined force of 900 US and Iraqi troops are also working in Operation Mountaineers around the area of rebel hotspot Ramadi, also west of the capital, to secure it ahead of the October 15 referendum on the constitution. The US army announced on Tuesday that five soldiers had been killed in western Iraq, including one in Iron Fist.
Iraq's parliament voted Wednesday to reverse last-minute changes to rules for next week's referendum on a new constitution after the United Nations said they were unfair. Sunni Arabs responded by dropping their threat to boycott the vote and promised to reject the charter at the polls.
U.N. officials welcomed the reversal, saying it helped restore integrity to the crucial Oct. 15 referendum and urged all Iraqis to participate. The United Nations, which was supervising the referendum, and U.S. officials had pressed Iraqi leaders to drop the rule change, which would have made it nearly impossible for disaffected Sunnis to defeat the charter.
"We're very happy about the National Assembly's action. We will now have a referendum law that follows international standards. It provides the ground for a fair referendum, and we call on all Iraqis to come forward to use a democratic right to give their opinion," said Michael Schulenburg, deputy head of the U.N. mission in Iraq.
After parliament's decision, Sunni Arab leaders dropped their threats to boycott the upcoming vote. American and U.N. officials were eager to avert the boycott because it would have deeply undermined the constitution's credibility and wrecked efforts to bring Sunnis into the political process.
With the reversal, "there will be no need to call the Sunnis to boycott the elections," Saleh al-Mutlaq, a top Sunni Arab politician, said. Now Sunni Arab leaders were gearing up to try to veto the constitution at the ballot box.
"With this result, the Sunni Arabs will be able to defeat the constitution, if there is honesty and an international supervision on the process," al-Mutlaq said. "I am sure if there is honesty, 95 percent of Sunni Arabs will vote no”.
Washington hopes majority approval for the constitution will unite Iraq's disparate factions and erode support for the country's bloody insurgency, paving the way to eventually begin withdrawing foreign troops.
But it wants Sunni Arabs to participate even though they are campaigning to defeat the charter. Many Sunnis oppose the charter and want it rewritten, believing it would divide Iraq and leave Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north with virtual autonomy and control over Iraq's oil wealth, while isolating the minority with little power or revenue in central and western areas.
Sunni Arabs, who make up only 20 percent of Iraq's 27 million population, were dominant under Saddam Hussein but lost influence after his ouster. The majority Shiites and the Kurds overwhelmingly support the constitution.
Under the restored election rules, Sunnis can defeat the document if they get a two-thirds "no" vote in any three provinces, even if a nationwide majority approves the charter. Sunnis have a chance of doing so in four of 18 provinces.
The Shiite-dominated parliament tried to close that loophole Sunday by passing a new interpretation of the rules, determining that a simple majority of those who cast votes was needed to pass the constitution — but that two-thirds of all registered voters had to vote no in three provinces to defeat it.
That effectively raised the bar for defeating the constitution to an impossible level, and the United Nations cried foul. After a brief debate Wednesday, the National Assembly voted 119 to 28 to restore the original voting rules for the referendum. Only about half of the 275-member legislative body turned up for the vote.
The text approved by parliament Wednesday confirmed that the word "voters" throughout the election rules in the interim constitution has a single meaning: those who cast votes. "The word 'voters' in paragraph (c), article 61 of the Transitional Administrative law, means registered voters who actually cast their votes in the referendum," reads the text, according to deputy speaker Hussain al-Shahristani.
"The government is completely keen to make the constitutional process legitimate and of high credibility and we are concerned about the success of this process rather than the results of the referendum," government spokesman Laith Kubba said after the vote. Wednesday's vote came after intensive talks by U.N. and American officials to pressure the Iraqis to reverse the rule change.—Agencies