Three Americans killed; Interim Council punishes media for criticism
News reports in al-Musil said that the number of the victims of the attack against the police center in the city which is situated to the north of Iraq increased to 13 dead and more than 40 wounded.
The report explained that the attack did not results in casualties among the the American occupation forces, because they were not in the area when the attack took place. An American force and ambulances hurried to the site of the explosion.
The explosion resulted in the collapse of part of the facade of the building of the headquarters and burning of five cars that were in the place, including the booby trapped car.
The explosion took place few hours before the killing of three American soldiers, in an attack at a military procession on the road between Tikrit and Karkouk, to the north of Iraq. An American military spokesman said that the attackers used a mortar in the operation. He added that the that the search operations resulted in finding another mortar that was defused by the American soldiers.
Meantime, the police director in Karkouk, Lt. Gen. Tourhan Youssef, confirmed the killing of Mahdi Muhammad, deputy official for the Turkman front in Taza district, to the south of Karkouk, yesterday morning, by unidentified gunmen, while the chairman of the front, Hussein Mali, was strongly wounded after which he was admitted to hospital.
Commenting on the accelerated events in Iraq, the secretary general of Muslims scholars, Harith al-Dari, said that the occupation forces will face a difficult condition because they do not take into account people's dignity and the indiscriminate killing they practice. This was expressed during the funeral held for Abdul Razzaq al-Dari, the chairman of the municipal council in Khan Dari district, to the west of Baghdad, who was killed on Friday after his car was hit by the fire of the American forces while carrying out an inspection operation in the area.
Meantime, the Iraqi Interim Governing Council decided to ban al-Jazeera channel from entering the headquarters of the council or to attend its press conferences for one month. The statement came in protest over a comment on the conditions in Iraq by one of the guests of the "opposite direction" ( al-Itijah al-Mu'akis) last week.
