ANCAPS Good News: Two U.S. government employees and two U.S. soldiers killed at council meeting in Baghdad

BAGHDAD: A bomb killed 10 people including two U.S. government employees and two U.S. soldiers at a council meeting in the Baghdad stronghold of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Tuesday, officials said.

Police said six Iraqis were killed and 10 wounded in the attack at a local council building in southern Sadr City.

The U.S. military blamed renegade Shi'ite militias called "special groups" for the bombing. That is jargon for rogue elements of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia that the military says are equipped, trained and funded by Iran. Tehran denies the charges.

U.S. forces also blamed a special group cell trying to stir up sectarian violence for a truck bomb that killed 63 people in a Shi'ite neighbourhood of Baghdad a week ago.

A U.S. embassy spokeswoman said one of the dead American civilians worked for the U.S. State Department and the other for the Department of Defence. She had no further details.

One U.S. soldier was also wounded, the military said.

The U.S. military said a suspect who had tested positive for explosives residue had been caught trying to flee the scene. That suggests a bomb was planted in the council building.

Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover, a U.S. military spokesman, said the target of the attack was believed to be a high-ranking council member. It was unclear if that person survived.

Stover said the rogue Shi'ite militant groups were unhappy the council member was working with U.S. forces to improve the quality of life for residents in southern Sadr City.

Mahmud al-Zamili, a member of Sadr City's council, said the blast occurred inside the office of the deputy head of the council. Police said the deputy was among the wounded.

"Special Groups are afraid of progress and afraid of empowering the people," Lieutenant-Colonel John Digiambatista, operations officer, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, said in a statement.

The U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, told U.S. lawmakers in April that the "special groups" were the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.

A Reuters photographer said U.S. and Iraqi forces had cordoned off the council offices in Sadr City, bastion of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, where battles between gunmen and security forces raged for weeks until a truce took effect in May.

EFFORTS TO BOOST GOVERNANCE

Scores of Americans work closely with local authorities across Iraq in an effort to improve governance and restore essential services following five years of war.

Those efforts have picked up in the past year as violence has dropped dramatically. U.S. forces are involved in the programmes, and also regularly visit local officials as part of their routine patrols.

Senior Iraqi officials have stressed it is vital to restore government services quickly in Sadr City, a Shi'ite slum, now that fighting has ended, to give residents an alternative means of support besides the Sadrist movement and the Mehdi Army, which dispenses food and other supplies.

There has been little central government control over Sadr City for years. Some two million people live in the area.

U.S. officials have mainly blamed Sunni Islamist al Qaeda insurgents for scores of major bombings that have killed thousands of people in Iraq in the last few years.

But a series of offensives in the past year have significantly weakened the group and forced it out of its traditional strongholds in Baghdad and western Anbar province.

On Monday a gunman killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded three as they left a council building southeast of Baghdad. Iraqi security officials said a local official in the town of Madaen had shot the U.S. soldiers who had gone to visit him.

The U.S. military said the soldiers had just attended a council meeting in the town when they were ambushed. The identity of the attacker was unclear, the military said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/06/24/africa/OUKWD-UK-IRAQ.php

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