Kuwait Times

Published Date: May 22, 2007

BAGHDAD: A mortar round hit Iraq's parliament inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone yesterday, members of parliament said, but there were no reports of injury or significant damage. Parliament was not sitting at the time, but many members were inside the building. A Shiite lawmaker told Al-Sharqiya television that the round had landed on the roof above the office of Speaker of Parliament Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, who was in his office. Another lawmaker told Reuters dust had filled the parliament but there were no injuries or substantial damage. On April 12, in the worst breach of security in Baghdad's most secure area, a suicide bomber killed one lawmaker in the parliament building. But the almost daily insurgent mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone, which houses government buildings and the US  embassy, cause relatively few casualties because many land harmlessly in the large expanses of open space.

5 civilians slain in Darfur

KHARTOUM: A Sudanese rebel group has accused the government of killing five civilians, one in an air raid, in the country's troubled Darfur region, a Khartoum newspaper reported yesterday. Jar Al-Naby, a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement, was quoted by the Al Sahafa newspaper as saying a military plane attacked Malam Housh locality in West Darfur on Saturday, killing one civilian and wounding another.  He was also cited as saying government-backed militias attacked the Jebbel Moon area in West Darfur on Saturday, killing four civilians. The Sudanese government could not be reached for comment.  The four-year conflict between ethnic African rebels and pro-government janjaweed militia in Sudan's western region has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million Darfurians.

Gunmen kill seven

BAGHDAD: A group of gunmen in two cars attacked a minibus heading to Baghdad from a Shiite town north of the capital yesterday, killing seven passengers, including a child, police said. The bus, which left the town of Khalis, was driving near the violence-wracked city of Baqouba, 60 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, about 11:30 am, when it was ambushed outside the town of Hibhib, police said.  The attack underscored the sectarian violence and instability that continues to plague Diyala province north of Baghdad despite the 3-month-old security crackdown in Baghdad and the surrounding areas. In western Baghdad, a roadside bomb detonated near a group of Iraqi soldiers patrolling the Sunni-dominated Adil neighborhood in western Baghdad about 10:15 am yesterday, killing three of the soldiers and injuring two others.

In the confusion of the attack, the soldiers fired near the office of Adnan Al-Dulaimi, the leader of parliament's largest Sunni Arab bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front, according to his office. No one was injured in the shootings. The stepped up US and Iraqi patrols of the capital during the crackdown have left the troops more vulnerable to attack by insurgents, military officials say.  The US military reported Sunday that six US soldiers on patrol in Baghdad were killed in a roadside bombing along with their interpreter on Saturday. A seventh soldier died in a blast Saturday in Diwaniya, a mostly Shiite city 80 miles south of the capital, where radical Shiite militias operate.