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Baghdad bomber kills sheiks

Four U.S.-allied tribal chiefs are among the 13 dead.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 26, 2007

BAGHDAD - A stealthy suicide bomber slipped into a busy Baghdad hotel Monday and blew himself up in the midst of a gathering of U.S.-allied tribal sheiks, undermining efforts to forge a front against the extremists of al-Qaida in Iraq. Four of the tribal chiefs were among the 13 victims, police said.

Iraq's prime minister quickly vowed renewed support for Anbar province's tribal leaders after the noontime explosion, which also wounded 27 people and devastated the ground-floor lobby of the high-rise Mansour Hotel.

"We are sure that this crime will not weaken the will of Anbar sheiks, " Nouri al-Maliki said in a statement.

The stunning terror strike in the heart of Baghdad, by a killer penetrating layers of security, was one of a wave of suicide and other bombings that killed at least 46 people across Iraq on Monday - another day of unrelenting violence raising questions about the ability of the reinforced U.S. military to stem the bloodshed.

In northern Iraq, 13 Iraqi police officers died in what the U.S. military described as a furious bomb and small-arms attack by insurgents on a security post shared by police and U.S. paratroopers.

In Baqubah, north of Baghdad, a week-old U.S.-Iraqi offensive pressed on Monday, street by street, to drive al-Qaida-linked insurgents from the city's western side. Beginning late Sunday, U.S.-Iraqi forces clashed with insurgents in the central market area, an Iraqi army officer reported.

The U.S. command reported that two U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in separate attacks in the Baghdad area.

The sheiks at the Mansour Hotel were associated with the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of Sunni Muslim tribes that have turned against the al-Qaida in Iraq extremists in a bid to drive them from the western province of Anbar.

The purpose of Monday's fatal gathering of tribal chiefs remained unclear.

In a statement denouncing the bombing, the U.N. representative here, Ashraf Qazi, referred to it as a meeting "seeking to resolve differences."

But one government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting also involved sheiks from outside Anbar, suggesting an effort to broaden the tribal front against al-Qaida.

FAST FACTS:

General says Iraqi forces need years

More than a third of Iraq's national police battalion commanders are now Sunni after a purge of Shiites who had a sectarian bias, a U.S. general said Monday. Despite improvements, he said it will be years before Iraqi forces are able to secure the country alone. Speaking to Pentagon reporters from Iraq, Army Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard said he had been saddened to see the destruction in one province, Diyala, where the number of U.S. forces had been reduced too soon. Pittard this week ends his tour as head of the effort to train Iraqi army soldiers, police and other security workers. "I think it'll take a couple of years before the Iraqi security forces are going to be able to fully take control of the security situation in Iraq, " he said.

[Last modified June 26, 2007, 00:40:16]