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Walkout at Saddam trial, Baghdad bombs kill 30

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 February 2006, 08:52 CST

By Salem al-Oreibi and Mussab Al-Khairalla

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bombs killed at least 30 people in Baghdad and wrecked the tomb of Saddam Hussein's father on Tuesday as the ousted leader was in court for the first time since days of sectarian violence pitched Iraq toward civil war.

Saddam's two lead defense counsels walked out within minutes of the trial restarting after a two-week pause when requests for a further adjournment and the removal of the chief judge were rejected. Officials said court-appointed lawyers would defend Saddam, as they had done since a previous walkout a month ago.

A subdued Saddam, who ended a hunger strike before the resumption, said little during the three-hour hearing but his half-brother objected loud and long on one occasion -- a pattern throughout the four-month-old trial, which has been troubled by charges of political bias and killings of two defense attorneys.

Twenty-three people were killed when a bomb left at a fuel station in eastern Baghdad blasted people lining up for petrol, police said. At least seven were killed in two other explosions, including an apparent car bomb in a busy street across the Tigris river from the trial in one of Saddam's former palaces.

Some 115 people were wounded in all, police said, in the bloodiest onslaught in the capital in two months and among the most serious since an alleged al Qaeda bomb destroyed a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday, sparking tit-for-tat reprisals.

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, closely engaged in efforts to forge a national unity government, told CNN that Iraq "came to the brink of civil war" but said the present "crisis is over." He warned, however, that further flare-ups were possible.

SOLDIERS KILLED

Two British soldiers were killed in southern Iraq and U.S. forces reported the death of an American soldier.

A Sunni mosque in Baghdad was earlier damaged by a bomb, police said, and police found nine bodies near the religiously mixed city of Baquba, scene of several recent sectarian attacks.

Activity on Baghdad's streets was otherwise returning to normal on the second day since the lifting of a three-day curfew imposed to try to stem violence that killed more than 200. A Saddam-era, Soviet-built Iraqi tank guarded a Sunni mosque in west Baghdad and Iraqi and U.S. military units were on patrol.

The dome of the shrine Saddam had erected over his father's originally modest grave in his Sunni home town of Tikrit was damaged, witnesses said. Windows and doors were blown out.

The former president, who has justified oppressive policies over three decades as necessary to holding Iraq together, sat quietly in the dock but his half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti launched into a familiar shouting match with the judge, who ordered him: "Shut up and sit down!"

Barzan had complained about the court-appointed lawyers, saying it was the "law of the jungle," but the judge told him all he had to do was have his own counsel return.

With no witnesses scheduled, the prosecution presented documents they said showed Saddam knew of the killings of some 148 Shi'ite men from the town of Dujail, where the former president survived an assassination attempt in 1982.

Saddam spoke once, to question the documents' authenticity. The judge ruled some of the prosecution's material inadmissible, saying the provenance of some handwritten documents was unclear.

The court will sit again on Wednesday. Court officials have said previously they expect a long adjournment after that.

Saddam and seven others have been on trial since October 19 for crimes against humanity and face hanging if convicted. His defense team accuse the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government of running a political show trial supported by the United States.

SOLDIERS KILLED

Local people said a roadside bomb blasted a British army patrol in the Shi'ite southern city of Amara on Tuesday. A spokesman said two soldiers were killed.

A manager of Baghdad morgue said it received 309 bodies since Wednesday, most victims of violence. Morgue data showed this was double the average -- it handled 10,080 bodies in 2005.

The Sunni minority's main political bloc, however, said it was not ready to end the boycott of coalition talks which it announced in protest at reprisals against Sunni mosques.

Still fearful of reprisals, some families on both sides of Baghdad's religious divide abandoned homes where they felt threatened by neighbors -- or threw barricades up in streets.

But national leaders and many ordinary Iraqis insisted they believed in each other's goodwill. State television broadcast images of Shi'ites and Sunnis praying together in Baghdad.

Overnight curfews remain in force across Iraq.

Washington hopes for stability to let it start bringing home 136,000 U.S. troops now caught in the middle of the conflict. It has been pressing Shi'ites to accept Sunnis in government since the Sunnis took part in U.S.-backed elections in December.

(Additional reporting by Lutfi Abu Oun, Michael Georgy, Alastair Macdonald and Nick Olivari in Baghdad, Ghazan al-Jibouri in Tikrit and Faris al-Mehdawi in Baquba)

Source: REUTERS

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