Iraq Watch: February 13, 2006

Attacks Kill Over 20 as Hussein Trial Resumes

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber attacked a group of Iraqis waiting in line to receive government payments in compensation for shorted food rations outside of an eastern Baghdad bank. The bomber detonated his explosive payload while bank security guards were frisking those waiting.

The blast killed at least ten people and wounded over 40, including three children.

Meanwhile, inside Baghdad's heavily secured 'Green Zone', located in the heart of the Iraqi capital, the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants resumed Monday. As has become customary, Saddam and the other co-defendants, especially Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, lashed out at the trials newly installed Kurdish chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman.

Hussein and the other defendants, on trial for their alleged roles in a 1982 massacre of over 140 Shiites from Dujail following an assassination attempt against the former president, were forced to attend Monday's legal proceedings after threatening to boycott the rest of the landmark trial. As Hussein was entering the courtroom he shouted, "Down with Bush." Later Saddam scolded the chief judge saying "Degradation and shame upon you, Raouf." In another outburst the former Iraqi leader berated the investigating judges calling them "homosexuals."

In other violence Monday, a roadside bomb killed two Iraqi police and injured another in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad while a police colonel was assassinated while driving to work in Ramadi. Another Iraqi police colonel was slain by gunmen Monday in Baghdad's southern Dora district.

Additionally, four Iraqi policemen, traveling in a civilian car, were ambushed and killed near the northern, industrial city of Beiji.

Northeast of the capital, five members of the Shiite political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), were gunned down in the restive city of Baqouba.