IRAQ: Iraq's interim prime minister announced the formation of a new spy agency to tackle insurgents yesterday, hours after a car bomb killed 10 people, including several policemen and two children, north west of Baghdad.
Mr Iyad Allawi said he was creating the General Security Directorate which he hoped would infiltrate and expose those behind an insurgency that has raged since US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein last year.
"We are determined to bring down all the hurdles that stand in the way of our democracy," Mr Allawi told a news conference, a day after a suicide car bomb in Baghdad killed 11 people and the governor of the northern city of Mosul was assassinated.
In the town of Haditha, officials said 10 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded near the main police station. The blast damaged a municipal building and a bank in the town. "Some of the dead are police, some work in the Haditha bank, while two are children," said Dr Najim al-Din at Haditha hospital.
A Filipino hostage in Iraq told his family in a videotaped message he would be returning home after the Philippines agreed to withdraw its small military contingent. Addressing his family, truck driver Angelo de la Cruz said: "Wait for me, I'm coming back to you," Arabic television channel Al Jazeera said in its translation of his remarks.
The group holding him said yesterday it would only free him after Manila withdraws the last of its soldiers from Iraq by the end of this month. Two other foreign hostages are still under threat of death.
The prime minister did not give specific details on what functions the new security body would carry out or how it would operate with Iraq's fledgling police force, but he said it would function under the judicial system.
For many Iraqis a new spy agency may have overtones of the Mukhabarat, Saddam's feared domestic intelligence agency which for decades kept tight tabs on the nation, but Mr Allawi said it was for the good of the country.
Many had expected Mr Allawi to announce an amnesty to insurgents who lay down their arms. He said the issue was being discussed, but that any offer would only last a short time.
In Kirkuk, a mother and her three children were killed when a rocket landed on their house late on Wednesday as they slept on the roof to escape the summer heat, police said. In the southern city of Kerbala, a car bomb exploded near a base where Bulgarian troops are based. No bystanders were hurt.
Bulgaria watched a deadline for the execution of a Bulgarian hostage pass without news on Wednesday, but stood firm and refused to pull out its troops. A headless corpse dressed in an orange jumpsuit was found by Iraqi police in the Tigris river yesterday but it has not yet been identified. A US military spokeswoman said it was not known whether the body was that of another Bulgarian hostage killed by his captors on Tuesday.