Nineteen killed in Iraq on Saddam's birthday

BAGHDAD: Insurgent attacks killed at least 19 people in Iraq on Saturday while a low turnout marked a sombre ceremony on the first birthday of Saddam Hussein since his execution.   

Four people were killed and three others wounded when gunmen attacked a public minibus in Baghdad's mixed Sunni and Shiite district of Zafaraniyah, a security official said.   

At first, the official said that the victims of the attack were employees of the Iraqi Red Crescent, but a spokesman for the organisation later denied this.   

In a separate attack in the same neighbourhood a group of garbage collectors stumbled upon a roadside bomb, which killed one and wounded eight others, the security official said.   

In nearby Saydiyah, another mixed district, unidentified gunmen shot dead five civilians and wounded another, he added.   

In Al-Risala, a Shiite district of southern Baghdad, a series of mortar rounds slammed into a residential area killing three people and wounding 10 more, including women and children, the official said.   

In the northern Shiite neighbourhood of Khadimiyah one civilian was killed and three others injured when a homemade bomb blew up in a public market, a police source said.   

Insurgents have carried out a steady stream of attacks in Baghdad, including high-profile car bombings, despite a massive security crackdown by Iraqi and US troops in the capital since February 14.   

And violence has continued to rage across the Iraqi countryside, where many insurgents fanned out ahead of the Baghdad security crackdown.   

A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police chief's house in the restive Sunni province of Al-Anbar on Friday, killing nine of his men and six civilians but missing his main target, a US military spokesman said Saturday.   

"The chief of police in Hit, General Hamid, was not killed," said Lieutenant Shawn Mercer of the US marines, after Iraqi media reported that the western town's police chief, Hamid Hazaa, had died in Friday's blast.   

He added that three police and 32 civilians were wounded in the attack.   

Hit is a town in western Iraq in an area where a coalition of Sunni tribes allied with Iraqi security forces and the US military is fighting a bitter campaign against the Al-Qaeda militant group.   

As attacks continued across Iraq on Saturday small crowds of Iraqi Sunnis gathered to mark Saddam's first birthday since his execution, amid calls to keep the ceremonies low-key.   

Around 200 local residents, mostly children between the ages of seven and 12, gathered at the former dictator's tomb in Awja, his home village outside the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.   

He was buried there after being hanged on December 30 for crimes against humanity.    

Saddam's execution has had little impact on the chaos that continues to plague Iraq four years after the US-led invasion, and the way in which Saddam was executed by the new Shiite-led regime has fuelled a cycle of revenge.   

Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr lashed out at President George W. Bush for refusing to set a timeline for the withdrawal of US troops, branding them the "armies of the dark forces".   

"What is this chaos that you claim will take place if you withdraw the armies of the dark forces from our lands?" the cleric asked, in a statement read to parliament by a pro-Sadr lawmaker.   

"How much more chaos could there be than there is now?" he demanded.   

On Saturday a pre-dawn mortar attack killed a five-year-old girl in the Janaja region, the hometown of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, outside the neighbouring city of Karbala.   

In the northern city of Mosul, unknown gunmen ambushed and killed Abdullah Mohammed, who had been a major in Saddam's now disbanded army, in the Wahda neighbourhood, said police Major Mohammed Ahmed.   

He said Mosul police had also found three unidentified corpses. Also on Saturday, two civilians were gunned down outside Kirkuk and a police officer was shot in the Sunni town of Samarra, according to local police in the two cities.   

Elsewhere in the restive Anbar province, US marines destroyed a suspected suicide truck bomb. They located the site after questioning a detainee and called in an airstrike after finding eight 55-gallon barrels wrapped in detonation wires and explosives, the US military said.   

No one was harmed during the operation.