22 killed in attacks as Gates visits Iraq

BAGHDAD —  At least 22 Iraqis were killed in four car bombings across the country Wednesday, underscoring the persistent danger as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited Iraq to see for himself the effects of a recent decline in violence.

In the day’s deadliest attack, a car bomb exploded outside a crowded juice shop in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karada, killing at least 14 people and injuring 33, police said.

The U.S. military also reported the deaths of three soldiers the previous day in a complex attack involving a roadside bomb and small-arms fire in Salahuddin province, north of the capital. One soldier was injured in the ambush. The deaths bring to 3,886 the number of U.S. military personnel killed since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

U.S. officials last month trumpeted a 55% decline in attacks since the deployment of about 28,500 additional troops in Baghdad and surrounding regions was completed in mid-June. The reduced bloodshed has been accompanied by significantly lower civilian and military death rates.

One of Gates’ main objectives Wednesday was to assess whether progress could be sustained as troop numbers are substantially reduced.

“More than ever I believe that the goal of a secure, stable and democratic Iraq is within reach,” Gates told reporters, though he added that “much remains to be done.”

Gates, on his sixth visit to Iraq since taking office last December, said the more than 70,000 Iraqis who have volunteered to join the fight against the Sunni Muslim insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq must be incorporated into the country’s security forces or placed in other employment.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s government has expressed reservations, fearing that the mostly Sunni volunteers, some of them former insurgents, could turn their guns against the Shiite-led authorities once U.S. forces leave. But the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, recently agreed to take over the contracts of as many as 12,000 people in Baghdad who are being paid by the U.S. military to help secure their neighborhoods.

Several top U.S. military and diplomatic officials also have pressed Iraqi politicians to capitalize on the security gains to push through legislative compromises on power sharing considered key to long-term stability.

Maliki and other senior Iraqi officials assured Gates that they were making progress on bills governing the distribution of oil proceeds and political power among the country’s major ethnic and religious groups. But recent parliamentary debates on the subject have degenerated into shouting matches.

The explosion in Karada happened shortly before Gates spoke in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone. The ebb in violence has brought crowds of shoppers back into the district’s commercial streets.

Falih Hussein was peering into a shop window looking for a new pair of shoes when the bomb sent shards of glass and other debris flying in every direction.

“Thank God I was alone. I wanted to bring my family with me today, but I didn’t,” he said by telephone from a hospital, where he was being treated for injuries to his hand, leg and shoulder.

“I saw the devastation in the shops, pools of blood here and there, and bodies dropped nearby,” he said. “It seems that they don’t want us to get out, they don’t want us to enjoy the stability.”

It was the worst blast to hit the capital since September, when 32 people died in an attack in Baghdad’s Bayaa neighborhood. Last month, at least 13 people were killed when a bomb went off in a popular Baghdad pet market.

Wednesday’s blast took place near a Shiite Muslim mosque, which police said sustained some damage. It was not clear whether the mosque was the primary target.

A rebel group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq had called for a new bombing campaign in an audio message posted Tuesday on a militant website.

Most of the day’s most serious attacks occurred north of the capital, in areas that have seen an influx of Sunni Muslim militants since pressure mounted on them in Baghdad and Anbar province, to the west.

In Baqubah, until recently a major insurgent stronghold, five people were killed when a van packed with explosives blew up outside the abandoned mayor’s office.

The building has been empty since it was damaged in a previous blast, but the area was crowded with pedestrians and cars. Several government offices and a school are nearby.

Farther north, another car bomb targeting a police commander’s convoy killed two people in Kirkuk, police said. The apparent target, Brig. Gen. Kaka Hameed, was among 10 people reported wounded.

In Mosul, Gates’ first stop Wednesday, one person died when a car bomb exploded near a police convoy. U.S. military commanders in the northern city told Gates that they needed more troops to cope with an increase in insurgent activity. They are hoping for the return of Iraqi battalions dispatched to help quash violence in the capital, Gates said.

The Defense chief delighted in telling reporters that he had witnessed his first traffic jam in Baghdad.

The comment is likely to bemuse Iraqis, for whom the tie-ups caused by blocked roads and frequent checkpoints are a continual source of frustration.

Gates sympathized with an Iraqi journalist who raised the issue, but said, “Frankly, I think that it bespeaks the progress that we’ve made that these are the kinds of issues that we are talking about, rather than how many people are being killed on the streets of Baghdad every day.”

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alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Times staff writers Tina Susman and Saif Hameed in Baghdad, special correspondent Ruaa al-Zarary in Mosul, and special correspondents in Kirkuk, Baqubah and Baghdad contributed to this report.