Suicide attacks lead to call for security review

March 14, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s top leadership called Friday for a review of government security measures after two suicide attacks killed about 60 people this week in the Baghdad area.

The capability of Iraq’s army and police to maintain security has taken on new urgency now that President Barack Obama has announced plans to remove all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by September 2010 and end the U.S. mission here by the end of the following year.

A statement on the Web site of Iraq’s presidency council, which includes the national president and the two vice presidents, said the attacks “represent a grave deterioration in the security situation” after weeks of relative calm.

The statement said the council, which has representatives of the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities, would ask Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to summon top security officials after he returns from a visit to Australia to discuss how the attacks were carried out and measures to prevent more in the future.

On Sunday, a suicide attacker wearing an explosives vest killed 30 people near the Baghdad police academy.

Two days later, a suicide attacker struck a group of Sunni and Shiite sheiks and military officers touring an outdoor market in a west Baghdad suburb, killing 33, including two Iraqi TV journalists.

An al-Qaida front organization, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed responsibility for the Sunday blast, which followed weeks of relative calm. The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, blamed both attacks on “small al-Qaida-related cells.”

In Sydney, Australia, al-Maliki insisted that Iraqis were united against terrorism and that the country was returning to normalcy after nearly six years of war.

“Iraq will neither be a venue for, nor a passage to, other organizations, particularly terrorism,” al-Maliki said in a speech.