Bomb kills 25 in Iraq; 2 US pilots die in crash
Foreign Desk Report

KERBALA (Iraq)—A car bomb outside a mosque in central Iraq killed at least 25 people and wounded 46 on Wednesday, targeting Shi’ite Muslims in an apparent sectarian attack as the holy month of Ramadan drew to a close. Earlier several roadside bombs and shootings killed at least a dozen people, mostly in Baghdad, and a US Marine helicopter came down in Ramadi, killing both crew members. US forces launched an air strike near the crash site and a local doctor said there were dozens of casualties.
With six weeks to go before parliamentary elections that Washington hopes will set Iraq on the path to stability, the Iraqi government issued an appeal to former junior officers in Saddam Hussein’s military to return to the colors two years after they were fired by the US occupiers. The car bomb in the mainly Shi’ite town of Musayyib, south of Baghdad, came as people were preparing for the three-day Eid holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Eid should start on Thursday or Friday, with a possible lag between Sunni and Shi’ite rites.
The Interior Ministry said 23 people had been killed in the attack, which used a remotely detonated car bomb. Musayyib has been hit by several attacks, including one in July when a suicide bomber blew up a fuel truck, killing at least 98 people and wounding 75.
The town sits on a fault line between the Shi’ite and the Sunni communities in an area where Saddam resettled many of his supporters on rich farmland south of the capital. Iraq’s Shi’ite — and Kurdish-led government and its US backers are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency that has killed thousands of people since the March 2003 US-led invasion.
US commanders have warned of a rise in bloodshed in the run-up to the December 15 election. In a statement issued on the eve of the main annual Muslim holiday, Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi, one of the few Sunnis in the government, invited former officers with the ranks of major, captain and lieutenant to return to the army.
With the election looming, there may be a political as well as practical security motive behind the move. The loss of army pay has been a major source of discontent among Saddam’s fellow minority Sunni Arabs, who dominated the officer corps. Senior officers, many of whom are regarded as having been too close to Saddam’s Baath party, were not invited back en masse, though some have returned to lead the new Iraqi military.
Within weeks of Saddam’s fall in April 2003, US administrator Paul Bremer disbanded at a stroke Iraq’s 400,000- strong armed forces and security agencies. US officials said it simply formalized the fact that the army had evaporated in the aftermath of the war, with soldiers deserting in huge numbers. Washington is racing to build up a new Iraqi army to let it bring home American troops who are pinned down in Iraq by insurgents displaying considerable military experience. The plight of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed former soldiers has been a rallying point for Sunni complaints that the ruling Shi’ites and Kurds are neglecting their interests.