Five bombings struck Iraq on Monday, killing at least 54 people, including 12 who died in a suicide attack at a Baghdad hotel frequented by members of Iraq’s parliament and Chinese diplomats, U.S. military and Iraqi security officials said.
Police and witnesses said the Mansour Hotel blast apparently targeted a group of Sunni tribal leaders from Anbar province, west of Baghdad. Six tribal leaders were killed in the attack.
The tribes have formed an umbrella group, called the Anbar Salvation Council, which is cooperating with U.S. forces in an offensive against the Sunni extremist group Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The council recently has been racked by internal divisions, and the group of tribal leaders meeting at the hotel had broken away from the main council, said Sabir al-Dulaimi, 47, who was supposed to attend the meeting but was stuck in traffic and arrived late.
“The indiscriminate attacks killed numerous civilians, some of whom were Sunni and Shia sheiks meeting in Baghdad in an attempt to further national reconciliation,” U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, chief commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said in a statement.
The dead included Fasal al-Gaood, a former governor of Anbar province, and Rahim al-Maliki, a well-known poet who was also a producer and anchor at state-run Al-Iraqiya TV. The network ran a black mourning ribbon on the corner of its screen Monday.
“Receiving this news about the killing of Sheik Fasal is a catastrophe,” his son, Belasim al-Gaood, said by phone from Amman, Jordan. “He was Iraq’s first man, and he was defending all Iraqis, not only Sunnis.”
In the single deadliest incident of the day, a suicide truck bomber drove a loaded oil tanker into the side of the police station in Baiji, about 125 miles north of the capital. The huge explosion caused part of the building to collapse, police Capt. Bilal al-Qayissi said. It killed 30 policemen and prisoners and wounded 55, he said.
“A ball of fire came out of the police station and hit the shops across the street,” said Ahmed Abdullah, 30, the owner of a nearby tire repair shop.
A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, said the police station, which was a joint security center with Iraqi police and U.S. troops, was hit by two car bombs, followed by an attack from insurgents firing small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. He said Iraqi forces repelled the attack.
Earlier, a suicide bomber rammed a black Chevy Caprice into a group of cadets outside the Hilla police station, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. The ensuing explosion killed eight people, police said.
A car bomb in Mosul killed two policemen and injured 20 people, police said.
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Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi troops have “seized control” of the western side of the embattled city of Baqouba, but 100 or more insurgents remain in the city and at least that many likely escaped, the American brigade commander said Monday. “We’re on our way to securing the population of Baqouba, which is what we came here to do,” said U.S. Army Col. Steve Townsend, the commander of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.
At the same time, Townsend warned of coming attacks as Al Qaeda in Iraq assesses the vulnerabilities of Operation Arrowhead Ripper, one of several operations U.S. commanders have launched in areas ringing Baghdad.
The push launched June 19 by about 10,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in Baqouba has uncovered a wide variety of explosives along roads and in booby-trapped houses.