U.N. leader’s Iraq visit shaken by rocket attack

BAGHDAD – The U.N. chief ducked, as if to find shelter behind the red and white flowers on the podium. He narrowed his eyes, and looked left and right.

Beside him, Iraq’s usually dour prime minister didn’t even flinch, and managed a slight smile at the startling welcome to Baghdad for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The U.N. leader was standing next to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki when a Katyusha rocket exploded about 50 yards from the building in the capital’s high-security Green Zone where they were answering questions from reporters.

Al-Maliki hardly blinked, but Ban quickly crouched, and appeared shaken. The blast came just minutes after al-Maliki said Ban’s visit showed Baghdad was “on the road to stability.”

The rocket was fired from a mainly Shiite area on the east bank of the Tigris River. The heavily guarded Green Zone on the opposite bank is home to the U.S. Embassy, Iraq’s government and the parliament.

Ban’s unannounced stop in the Iraqi capital was the first visit by a U.N. secretary-general since Kofi Annan, his predecessor, came to Baghdad in November 2005. The U.N. Security Council issued a statement strongly condemning the rocket firing as an “abhorrent terrorist attack.”

The U.N. presence in Iraq has been much smaller than planned since militants bombed the organization’s Baghdad headquarters on Aug. 19, 2003, and killed 22 people, including the top U.N. envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

The U.S. military announced three Americans died in combat Wednesday – an Army soldier slain in Baghdad and another soldier and a Marine killed in Anbar province. At least 44 Iraqis were killed or found dead Thursday, including 25 bodies dumped in the capital, all showing signs of torture, police said.

The military also reported a major breakthrough in the campaign against rogue Shiite militants, saying it captured two brothers responsible for a sneak attack Jan. 20 that killed five U.S. soldiers guarding the provincial headquarters in Karbala, a city 50 miles south of Baghdad.

Gunmen speaking English, wearing U.S. military uniforms and carrying American weapons killed one American soldier during that attack, then carried off four captured soldiers and later shot them to death about 25 miles from Karbala.