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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Car bomb kills 14 mourners


An Iraqi security officer stands at the scene of a car bomb that exploded Tuesday in Khalis, Iraq. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents detonated a car bomb Tuesday outside a tent packed with hundreds of Iraqis mourning victims of an earlier attack, killing 14 people and wounding dozens.

The blast left a yard-wide crater in the ground, set five cars on fire and burned the tent in the central town of Khalis, the heart of Iraq’s orange-growing region. Dismembered corpses lay on the floor. White plastic chairs where mourners had been sitting in orderly rows were broken and twisted.

The bombing underscored insurgents’ determination to carry out attacks more than a week after the United States transferred power to an interim government led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

However, for the first time, a vigilante group emerged threatening to retaliate for the violence, which has often killed Iraqi civilians.

On Tuesday, a previously unknown group calling itself the “Salvation Movement” threatened to kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Islamic radical accused in numerous attacks.

“This is the last warning. If you don’t stop, we will do to you what the coalition forces have failed to do,” said a masked gunman who appeared in a video with four other militants.

A day earlier, U.S.-led coalition forces launched an airstrike on a suspected al-Zarqawi safe house in the militant stronghold of Fallujah. The attack killed 15 people, witnesses said.

Three U.S. Marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in western Iraq, the military said Tuesday. Two died in action Monday in Anbar province, while a third died of his wounds Monday.

Also in Anbar, insurgents gunned down a son of the head of the city council in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. Hussein Amer Ali Suleiman, 18, was the younger son of Sheikh Amer Ali Suleiman, the head of al-Dulaimi tribe – the biggest in Anbar.

Meanwhile, the family of Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun said they had received word the Lebanese-American had been freed by his captors. A Lebanese government official said Hassoun was released after promising to leave the U.S. military. However, his whereabouts remained unknown.

“We have received reliable information the guy is free,” Sami Hassoun told The Associated Press. “We received a sign from my brother reassuring us.”

The bombing in Khalis, near the city of Baqouba, apparently targeted local officials attending the wake for a victim of an attack Sunday that targeted the council’s chairman and killed his brother. Hundreds of mourners were drinking black coffee symbolizing grief when the car blew up within yards of the tent, said Maj. Gen. Walid Al-Azawi.

The governor of Diyala province, Abdullah al-Juburi, had just left the wake when the blast went off. Guerrillas have been targeting local officials and police throughout Iraq because they are seen as collaborators with Americans.

Violence has rocked Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, in recent weeks. U.S. 1st Infantry Division soldiers hammered insurgents who tried to seize government buildings and police stations only days before the June 28 power handover.

Some of those assaults were blamed on al-Zarqawi’s network, which launched a series of car bombings before the handover that killed nearly 100 people, many of them civilians. His followers have also claimed responsibility for the beheading of American Nicholas Berg and South Korean Kim Sun-il.

In a videotape sent to Al-Arabiya television Tuesday, the “Salvation Movement” questioned how al-Zarqawi could use Islam to justify assassinations, kidnappings and the killings of innocents.

“He must leave Iraq immediately, he and his followers and everyone who gives shelter to him and his criminal actions,” said a man on the video, speaking in an Iraqi accent.

“We swear to Allah that we have started preparing … to capture him and his allies or kill them and present them as gift to our people,” the man said.

The speaker stood alongside four other men, all with their faces covered with Arab head scarves, flanked by rocket propelled grenades, pistols, rifles and an Iraqi flag.

Allawi’s government has been trying to figure out how to deal with the violence. His defense minister met with senior NATO officials Tuesday to carve out a possible role for the alliance in the country, and Iraqi officials said they would announce a new security law today.

In other attacks, a roadside bomb targeted a British military convoy Tuesday, killing one civilian and injuring two, said Capt. Mushtak Taleb, an Iraqi police spokesman.

And in Baghdad, the U.S. military said troops fired on a car that failed to heed warnings to stop at a checkpoint Monday, killing one child and wounding another.