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BAGHDAD (AP) – The bomber at the Mansour Hotel, on the west bank of the Tigris River, struck as the lobby bustled with members of news media organizations headquartered at the hotel and other guests, witnesses said.
Among them were a group of sheiks associated with the Anbar Salvation Council , an alliance of Sunni Muslim tribes that have turned against the al-Qaida in Iraq extremists in a bid to drive them from the western province of Anbar.
Police and security officials said a man wearing traditional Arab garb like the sheiks’, complete with headdress, entered the lobby. He also was wearing a belt of explosives, packed with nails and metal pellets, said these officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. He approached the sheiks and detonated the bomb.
A traditional Arab headgear lays amidst the rubble at the lobby of al-Mansour Hotel in central Baghdad. Suicide bombers struck a hotel in the heart of Baghdad and police targets in a wave of bombings that killed at least 45 people, including tribal leaders who have vowed to fight Al-Qaeda.
Another police official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said six of the assembled sheiks were killed.
Gen. Aziz al-Yassiri, a Defense Ministry adviser, also died in the hotel attack, a ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Asked whether al-Yassiri had been meeting with the sheiks, this official would say only he was on “an official mission.” The purpose of Monday’s fatal gathering of tribal chiefs remained unclear.
The U.S. command here has pointed repeatedly to the Anbar group and its opposition to al-Qaida as an example for other tribes to follow elsewhere in Iraq. But the Salvation Council reportedly has been riven by disagreements — over how closely to work with the U.S. occupation force, for example.
In a statement denouncing the bombing, the U.N. representative here, Ashraf Qazi, referred to it as a meeting “seeking to resolve differences.”
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WASHINGTON (AFP) June 24 – But Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the number two commander in Iraq, on Friday outlined the military’s hopes for the campaign now underway to uproot Al-Qaeda from sanctuaries in and around Baghdad.
By August 1, US and Iraqi forces should have completed clearing insurgent havens north, south and west of the city, cutting off the stream of devastating bombings that inflamed sectarian violence, he said.
Success will then depend on whether Iraqi forces are capable of holding those newly won areas, he said. If they can, US troops may be able to start leaving the country early next year.
“I think, by the spring or earlier, they (the Iraqis) will be ready to take on a larger portion of their security, which means, I think, potentially, we could have a decision to reduce our forces,” he said.
Currently, there are 156,000 US troops in Iraq.
Adding to his optimism is a reversal of fortunes in western al-Anbar province, a seat of the insurgency where tribal sheiks have joined with US forces against Al-Qaeda.
Written off as virtually lost a year ago, the province could be brought under Iraqi security control as early as this fall, the general said.
In Iraq, a ‘surge of operations’
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."