A suicide car bomber rammed into a convoy carrying Iraq's labour minister in morning traffic, killing 11 people and wounding 22 in central Baghdad, police said on Thursday. A spokesman for the Labour Ministry said Minister Mahmoud al-Sheikh Radhi was unhurt, but three of his bodyguards were among the dead.
In a sign of the sharp reduction in violence across Iraq this year, US forces put Iraqis in control of Babil province - including the fertile palm groves once rife with Sunni militants that US troops used to call the "triangle of death". But the strike on the minister's convoy was a reminder authorities have not been able to halt suicide bombings, a signature tactic of Sunni Islamist militants such as al Qaeda, despite a drop in other types of violence across the country.
A Reuters television cameraman in the vicinity filmed the blast but an Iraqi soldier confiscated his videotape. The cameraman, about 150 metres (yards) away at the time of the explosion, saw a car slam into a convoy of six or seven four-wheel-drive vehicles and explode in a ball of flame near Tahrir square in central Baghdad.
Police and bodyguards in the convoy opened fire after the blast. Several vehicles crashed and others sped away. Although militants are still able to carry out bomb attacks, they no longer control whole towns and rural districts as they did in the first half of 2007, when Washington sent additional troops and many Sunni Arabs joined US-backed patrols.
Few areas are better examples of that security transformation than Babil, named for its grand ruins of ancient Babylon, which on Thursday became the 12th of Iraq's 18 provinces to be handed over to Iraqi control.
"This is proof that our military forces have reached self-sufficiency, and can now be depended upon to preserve internal security," national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said at a ceremony in the provincial capital Hilla. Lieutenant-General Lloyd Austin, commander of US combat forces in Iraq, called the event a "milestone for Iraq in maturing as a sovereign and democratic nation."
"Just a year ago this province was experiencing well over 20 attacks per week. And today attacks are down well over 80 percent. This is truly remarkable," he said. Iraqi troops, police and even fire-fighters marched past to the sound of a brass band. An actor in a wig and ancient Babylonian dress performed a skit at the close of the parade. The province includes rural Sunni Arab areas dotted with date palm groves along the Euphrates south of Baghdad, which US forces dubbed the "triangle of death" in the years after the 2003 invasion, because of the stubborn insurgency there.
Violence in the triangle dropped last year when many Sunni Arabs joined US-funded patrols known as "Awakening" groups. Babil's cities have also seen uprisings by followers of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr as recently as April this year. But they have been far quieter in recent months as Sadr's followers have held to a cease-fire. Rubaie said Iraqis will also take control of Wasit province along the Iranian border within days, leaving just the capital Baghdad and four volatile northern provinces still under US command.
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