Two explosives dismantled in front of offices of the higher council; Iraqi minister escapes assassination

Ten persons were wounded including three Americans when an explosive went off, implanted on the roadside in Musil, to the north of Iraq, yesterday, while the Iraqi police in al-Najaf said that it dismantled two explosives implanted on Wednesday and Tuesday near offices for the Higher Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

In Musil, security sources said that the explosive went off the moment three American trucks were running, but the explosives only hit two sedan cars behind and as a result, 6 Iraqis were injured including a Turkish taxi driver.

Meantime, the Iraqi daily al-Zaman said yesterday that the Iraqi minister of municipalities and works, Nasrin Browari, on Monday escaped an assassination attempt in Karbala city, as one explosive went off in her procession while she was visiting her ministry's departments in the city. The paper said that the incident resulted in no human casualties or damages. Nasrin Borawi who was a minister in Kurdistan district government, which falls under the rule of the Kurdistani Democratic Party of Masoud al-Barazani, is the only woman in the Iraqi ministerial formation who was appointed by the governing council in September 2003.

In Baghdad, hundreds of retied Iraqis and all of them are elderly took the streets in a demonstration in the downtown of the capital demanding the Iraqi governing council and the occupation forces to accelerate the process of giving them their monthly salaries, which were stopped since the fall of the former regime. N.