Baghdad, December 04: Iraq’s Prime Minister says the recent bomb attack near the country’s parliament in Baghdad was a failed assassination attempt against him.
“The preliminary intelligence information says that the car was due to enter parliament [on Monday] and stay there and not to explode. It was supposed to explode on the day I entered parliament,” AP quoted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as saying on Saturday.
However, the prime minister was not in or near the building at the time of the explosion.
At least two people were killed and seven others, including one lawmaker, were injured.
The Iraqi parliament lies inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, which is regarded as one of Iraq’s safest areas.
Etab Aldori, a member of the Iraqi parliament had earlier accused US forces in the country of involvement in the attack.
Aldori said Washington is trying to create the impression that Iraqi forces are unable to ensure security in the country after the US withdrawal. The US is to pull its troops out by the end of 2011.
Daily bomb attacks, roadside bombs and shootings have been widespread in Iraq since the US-led invasions of the country in 2003.
Iraqi officials had in mid-November said that Washington planned to allow 740 so-called US trainers in the country after 2011.
The US trainers will be stationed in Baghdad, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Basra, Nassiriya, Besmaya, Taji and Arbil, according to Iraqi officials.
A US military official had also said that some 700 civilian trainers were to remain, together with 157 military personnel and a force of up to 25 marine guards at the massive US Embassy compound in the Green Zone.
The US and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003 under the pretext of seizing the weapons of mass destruction allegedly wielded by executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime, weapons which have yet to be discovered.
——Agencies