Baghdad: The Iraqi cabinet has approved a
plan to offer rewards of up to USD 85,000 for tip-offs about
car bombs, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Wednesday, a day
after a new wave of bombings.
"The cabinet decided yesterday to offer rewards of up to
100 million dinars (USD 85,000) for information about car
bombs," Maliki told a news conference.
The plan still needs to go before parliament.
Maliki also announced the creation of a new "joint
coordination committee for intelligence and security which
will work with citizens to unmask hidden terrorist cells."
Three car bombs rocked Baghdad yesterday, killing four
people and wounding 14 in the fourth wave of coordinated
attacks in as many months.
An eight-day-old baby was killed and 40 people wounded,
five of them children, the same day by a car bomb targeting a
church and adjacent school in the main northern city of Mosul.
There has been mounting criticism of the security
services' failure to stem car bomb attacks, even against
public buildings in the heart of the capital, despite the
security measures already in place.
On August 19 a double suicide attack against the foreign
and finance ministries killed 106 people and wounded some 600.
On October 25 it was the turn of the justice ministry and
a provincial office, with the blasts killing 153 people and
wounding more than 500.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 22:19