Bomber kills 27 as US hands over Karbala to Iraq

KARBALA:  The US military on Monday transferred the Shiite holy province of Karbala back to Iraq as a suicide bomber killed 27 policemen in an attack on their headquarters in the restive city of Baquba.
       
Karbala became only the eighth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be handed over to local forces by the US-led coalition.
       
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who addressed the hand over ceremony, blamed his own military leaders for slow progress in taking back control of the country's war-ravaged provinces.
       
"Allow me to say that we are late, very late, to reconstruct, to rebuild our forces for reasons that I do not want to mention here," said Maliki who is under pressure from Washington to rebuild his forces faster.
       
The delay in rebuilding Iraqi forces has hampered US plans to withdraw its forces from the country.
       
"We demand that the military and police leadership make more efforts to reconstruct and rebuild the security forces in order to take over control of the rest of the provinces," Maliki said.
       
"These provinces are waiting to be secured by their own sons once again."
       
Washington and Baghdad had hoped that Iraqi forces would take control of most of the provinces this year, and had even declared 2007 the "Year of Security" in Iraq.
       
But a US congressional report in September said Iraq was 12-18 months away from assuming complete security control, largely because of a corrupt police force.