IRAQ: UN special envoy to Iraq, Ad Melkert, is unhurt after militants bomb hits his convoy

Record ID: 356773

  • Title: IRAQ: UN special envoy to Iraq, Ad Melkert, is unhurt after militants bomb hits his convoy
  • Date: 21st October 2010
  • Summary: NAJAF, IRAQ (OCTOBER 20, 2010) (REUTERS): POLICEMEN NEAR THEIR VEHICLE AT SITE WHERE U.N. ENVOY IN IRAQ WAS TARGETED POLICEMEN AND POLICE VEHICLE NEAR SITE CORDONED OFF WITH RED TAPE CRATER CAUSED BY BOMB BLAST POLICEMEN STANDING NEAR CRATER CAUSED BY BOMB BLAST SMASHED WINDOW OF CAR ON DIRT AT SITE OF ATTACK POLICEMAN AT SITE NAJAF, IRAQ (OCTOBER 19, 2010) (ORIGIN
  • Embargoed: 5th November 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA7FOZ3FJ44VXDHDDYJLH1Q2NYH
  • Story Text: Security officials on Wednesday (October 20) cordoned off the site of a roadside bomb that some Iraqi officials blamed on Shi'ite militants. The blast on Tuesday (October 19) hit a convoy carrying the UN special envoy to Iraq, Ad Melkert, but he was unhurt, the United Nations said.
    Police said the bomb damaged the second-to-last vehicle, an Iraqi SWAT car, in the UN-Iraqi police convoy as it was leaving the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding three.
    A UN spokesperson in Baghdad said that the special representative was in the convoy, and that he was unhurt, adding that they could not speculate on the motive.
    Melkert was in Najaf for a visit to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shi'ite Muslim cleric.
    After the meeting, Melkert urged Iraq's political leaders to sit down and negotiate the formation of a coalition government without further delay, seven months after an inconclusive election yielded no outright winner.
    "We as United Nations continue to work to support all parties in their constructive efforts to bring a new government together. It is now high time that parties are ready to meet, and they are ready to do so, around one table on the bases of principles embodied on the constitution and without any preconditions," Melkert told reporters.
    The lingering political impasse has raised tensions in Iraq just as the sectarian slaughter between once dominant Sunnis and majority Shi'ites triggered after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion fades, and U.S. forces begin to gradually withdraw.
    Overall violence in Iraq has fallen sharply but attacks by a stubborn Sunni Islamist insurgency and some Shi'ite militia groups continue on a daily basis.
    An Iraqi police officer in Najaf said an investigation had been opened into the attack.
    He said that initial investigation indicated the group Asaib al-Haq was involved in the attack because they always call for the enemy (foreigners) to be targeted.
    Shi'ite militia Asaib al-Haq, or Leagues of Righteousness, which splintered from the Mehdi Army of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, frequently claims credit for attacking U.S. forces and kidnapping foreign nationals.
    UN spokesman Farhan Haq told a daily UN news briefing in New York it was not clear if the UN envoy was specifically targeted.
    Muqdad al-Moussawi, spokesman for Najaf police, said the likely target in the convoy was the city's police chief. Despite the UN acknowledgement of the incident, he denied that Melkert had been in the convoy.
    Major General Hassan al-Baidhani, the head of Iraqi army staff at the Baghdad operations command, said Melkert had already flown out of the airport where the convoy had dropped him off when the bombing occurred.
    It was unclear why the accounts were so inconsistent.
    The United Nations operates under tight security in Iraq and its headquarters are now based within Baghdad's fortified Green Zone neighbourhood where many government offices and embassies are located.
    A truck bomb at the UN's previous headquarters in Baghdad killed 22 people in 2003, including then-UN envoy to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian.
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