A nervous normality returned to Iraq’s capital on Sunday after a 24-hour curfew imposed after U.S. troops arrested a top politician’s bodyguard suspected of a plot to bomb the heavily fortified government compound.
The curfew was lifted at 6 a.m. and traffic converged on central Baghdad’s busy streets as shops and businesses re-opened for the start of the full working week.
Though there is a daily overnight curfew and cars are banned during weekly prayers on Fridays, Saturday’s blanket ban on all movement, even on foot, was unusually severe and disrupted the social life normally associated with the holy month of Ramadan.
Just west of Baghdad, in the minority Sunni stronghold of Falluja, a car bomb killed four people and wounded six in a busy vegetable market, police said.
On Friday, U.S. troops arrested a security guard at the home of the leader of the main Sunni Arab political bloc, Adnan al-Dulaimi. They said the man planned suicide attacks in the government’s “Green Zone” and may have had links to al-Qaida.
“The detained individual is suspected of involvement in the planning of a multi-vehicle suicide operation inside Baghdad’s International Zone,” the military said on Saturday.
A senior official in the Accordance Front named the arrested man as Khudhar Farhan and said he was in his mid-20s and had joined Dulaimi’s security staff about a month ago. Dulaimi leads the Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament.
U.S. officials fear an increase in violence during Ramadan. Suicide bombings were at an all-time high during the first week.
Source: Green Zone security compromised
There was no official explanation for the curfew which emptied streets on Saturday but a political source said it was linked to security in the Green Zone that had been compromised. Another senior official said Baghdad feared large-scale unrest.
The 2-square mile riverside compound once occupied by Saddam Hussein is home to thousands of people, including most senior officials, parliament and the U.S. and British embassies.
In March, Iraq jailed several defense officials accused of a plot to infiltrate hundreds of al-Qaida fighters into the Zone’s security force.
A surge in sectarian killings since February has been marked by dozens of corpses being found nearly every day dumped in the streets of Baghdad, bound, tortured and shot. Many are victims of tit-for-tat communal fighting.
One senior U.S. military official said this week police had allowed death squads to re-enter areas already cleared by U.S. forces in a seven-week-old crackdown in the capital.
Washington’s ambassador to Iraq threatened to cut off funding for the Iraqi police if the government failed to punish police officials for torture and human rights violations.
Zalmay Khalilzad told the New York Times that U.S. officials were reviewing programs under a law that bans U.S. funding for armies and police forces that violate human rights.
