BAGHDAD, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Three explosions on Saturday rocked area near the building where delegates from neighboring and world powers were meeting in Baghdad to discuss sectarian violence and stability in Iraq, police said.
"Three mortar rounds landed just outside the heavy fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad without knowing whether there was any casualty," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
Delegates from 16 countries, including the United States, Syriaand Iran, convened Saturday in Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs to drum up support and find solutions for the unrelenting violence in the country.
An Iraqi soldier stands guard behind
barbed wire at a checkpoint in Baghdad March 10, 2007.
(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo
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¡¡¡¡Death toll rises to 10 in Baghdad suicide car bombing
BAGHDAD, March 10 (Xinhua) --
The death toll rose to 10 people killed and 43 others wounded when a suicide car
bomb struck a busy area in Sadr City neighborhood on Saturday, an Interior
Ministry source told Xinhua.
"The death toll rose to 10 and up to 43 others
wounded in the attack that targeted an Iraqi army checkpoint in Mudaffar
Squarein Sadr City neighborhood," the source said on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, the source put the toll at five killed and
10 others wounded when a suicide car bomber blew a car bomb in the Shiite
bastion in eastern Baghdad.
The attack came shortly after three mortar rounds
landed near the ministry of foreign affairs just outside the Green Zone where
representatives from 16 countries gathered to find solutions for violence that
swept the war-torn country since the U.S-led invasion in 2003.
Separately, the police reported that a Shiite pilgrim
was killed and five others wounded when Katyusha rockets hit the al-Muheet
Street in Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Kadhimiya. Three more Shiite
pilgrims were wounded when gunmen opened fire on them while they were traveling
on the Talbiyah bridge in eastern of the capital.
The sectarian attacks occurred when hundreds of
Shiite pilgrims celebrated the commemoration of Arba'een (40 days after the day
of Ashura) which marks the death of Imam al-Hussein bin Ali, the grandson of
Prophet Mohammed, who was killed in the seventh century.
Iraq urges other countries
to refrain from intervening in its affairs
BAGHDAD, March 10
(Xinhua) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday urged neighboring
and other countries to refrain from intervening in his country's internal
affairs and to support his government to give a success to the ongoing political
process and bring security to the war-torn country.
"We call on our brothers and friends to take a
unified stand toward the Iraqi people with no distinction along sectarian or
ethnic lines," Maliki said in a speech at the opening session of a security
conference in Baghdad aimed at halting sectarian violence in the war-torn
country.
Maliki underlined that Iraq would not intervene in
other countries' affairs and in the mean time it would not accept interventions
from others.
"We will not accept, whatsoever, that Iraq becomes a
battlefield for regional or international conflicts. Therefore, we demand the
meeting delegations and the international community not let some countries to
support certain parties in Iraq," Maliki said.
The Iraqi prime minister expressed his hope that the
conference would shape a milestone toward supporting his government to give a
success to the political process and bring security and stability to his
country.
Meanwhile, Maliki warned that violence that is
beating Iraq could spread throughout the region and that the price that is being
paid by Iraqis would be paid by others.
"The terrorism which kills Iraqis is the same that
hits International Trade Center in New York and is the same that kills people in
Saudi Arabia and other states," he said.
The conference kicked off earlier in the day at a
heavily fortified area at the edge of the Green Zone in central Baghdad. It
began with a brief speech by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari who hopes the
meeting would lead to more gatherings in the near future.
"We hope this step is a start towards more steps in
the nearfuture for larger gatherings to reduce the tension," Zebari said.
After Maliki's speech the meeting turned to a
closed-door session.
The delegations were mostly represented by
ambassadors in Iraq, but the United States sent David Satterfield, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice's top adviser on Iraq along with its ambassador Zalmay
Khalilzad.
Iraq called for the meeting to drum up support and
find solutions for the unrelenting violence in the country.
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