Iraq Watch: March 1, 2006

Attacks Kill Nearly 50; Saddam Admits Guilt

BAGHDAD, Iraq - More than 45 Iraqis were killed in attacks around the country Wednesday as former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein admitted in his landmark trial that he personally signed the death warrants of 148 Shiites in 1984 after a failed 1982 assassination attempt against him in Dujail.

Hussein argued that his decision to have the perpetrators executed was legal, as they had been convicted in Iraq's 'Revolutionary Court' under the jurisdiction of then court official Awad al-Bandar - who is also currently on trial for his role in the Dujail incident. Saddam repeatedly asked the presiding judge, "Where is the crime? Where is the crime?"

Also during the course of Wednesday's session Saddam pleaded with Kurdish chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman to have the other seven co-defendants acquitted and released, stating: "If the chief figure makes thing easy for you by saying he was the one responsible, then why are you going after these people? A head of state is here. Try him and let the others go their way."

In continuing sectarian violence, stemming from the February 22 bombing of the sacred Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra, a car bomb near a traffic police station in southeastern Baghdad's al-Jadida neighborhood killed at least 29 people and wounded 67.

Earlier in the day six civilians were killed in a bombing in central Baghdad's Tahrir (Liberation) Square. The bomb, which also injured 17 Iraqis, was detonated as an Iraqi police patrol was passing by.

Mortar fire, meanwhile, left two people dead in Mahmoudiya, a religiously-mixed city located south of the capital in the infamous "Triangle of Death." Another mortar barrage killed a civilian in the Qadisiyah district of western Baghdad.

Also in western Baghdad, gunmen attacked a Shiite funeral procession killing two and wounding five.

Elsewhere, militants ambushed a police convoy carrying approximately 50 officers returning from training in Sulaimaniyah. At least five police officers were killed in the attack 45 miles northeast of Tikrit. Additionally, 11 officers were wounded in the ambuscade.

A separate guerilla ambush in Riyad, southwest of Kirkuk, resulted in the deaths of three Iraqi policemen.