Iraq Council Head Chides U.S. on Security After Bombs

[Barrett808]

Iraq Council Head Chides U.S. on Security After Bombs
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The head of Iraq's Governing Council said on Thursday the country's U.S.-led occupiers must do more to provide security after bombs killed at least 171 people at Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines this week.

The comments by Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum, a Shi'ite cleric and current president of the U.S.-appointed Council, underlined friction between leaders of the Shi'ite majority and occupying forces over a wave of devastating attacks on Iraqis.

Not long after he spoke, a ricocheting rocket killed at least three people in car near a telephone exchange in west Baghdad, local police said at the scene.

Iraq's top Shi'ite authority Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose call for elections forced Washington to speed up the timetable for polls, has blamed U.S. forces for failing to secure Iraq's borders. Another Council member said the attacks showed Iraqi militias should be in charge of security.

"I put the blame on the authorities," Bahr al-Uloum told reporters as he visited a hospital where survivors of Tuesday's attack at Baghdad's Kadhimiya shrine were being treated.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040304/wl_nm/iraq_dc&cid=574&ncid=1480

[dArKeR]

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