Iraqi Governing Council President Killed in Attack

The blast was so forceful that it flung the car Salim was apparently riding in on to the other side of the street. It left 17 charred and burning vehicles on both sides of the median.

"I saw five burned bodies, completely burned," Mohammed Leith, 21, who lives about 100 yards from the explosion. "The one who did this is creating chaos. He only killed Iraqis. Even the Governing Council members are Iraqis too."

Leith said that the street had never been the target of such an explosion before, but he said that U.S. soldiers discovered and safely defused an improvised explosive device, or roadside bomb, on the street about three weeks ago.

Kimmitt said at the scene that the cars were in line to get through the checkpoint and enter the Green Zone at the moment of the attack, but witnesses said they believed the cars were still moving. Kimmitt later told a news briefing that it had not been firmly determined whether Salim was entering the Green Zone or leaving it.

Daniel Senor, a spokesman for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, was asked at the briefing about governing council members blaming the coalition for failing to give them enough protection.

"We understand that there are a lot of high emotions," Senor said, adding that the coalition has provided governing council members with financial assistance for security, body armor, weapons, armored vehicles and protection service training. But he said Salim's security detail consisted primarily of family members who had not participated in any of the training programs.

"We make the resources available, we make the training available, but it's up to the individual [governing council] members and the security details if they want to participate in it," Senor said. He did not explain whether or how such training might have thwarted the attack.

Salim is the second member of the 25-member Governing Council to be assassinated. Akila Hashimi, who was one of three female members of the U.S.-appointed advisory body, was fatally injured during a gunfire attack on her convoy near her Baghdad home on Sept. 20, and she died five days later.

Salim in recent days had advocated a continued role for the Governing Council, which has struggled for popular legitimacy since U.S. officials created it last summer. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has proposed abolishing the council on June 30, when the U.S. occupation is to formally end, and replacing it with a caretaker government of technocrats.

"We shall listen to the ideas of Mr. Brahimi, but his ideas are not compulsory for us," Salim said this month "The Governing Council is the one responsible for forming the government."

The council said it selected Ghazi Mashal Ajil Yawar, a Sunni Muslim civil engineer from the northern city of Mosul, to replace Salim. Yawar will serve as head of the U.S.-appointed council until the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.

"The Iraqi leaders are the main targets of those terrorists and anti-democratic forces, and we will not be intimidated from continuing our path to build a new Iraq," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in remarks at the World Economic Forum being held at the Dead Sea, wire services reported.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office condemned the killing, saying Salim and his colleagues had been working "to give Iraq a future of freedom, democracy and security, all of which are goals rejected by the terrorists."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, calling the attackers "enemies of the Iraqi people," said Salim's death should not deter the transfer of power. "What this shows is that the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq are trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power from the occupiers to the Iraqi people," Straw said in Brussels, Belgium, on arriving for a meeting of European Union foreign ministers.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose country has about 800 troops in and around Iraq, said he was "horrified" by a killing that showed some Iraqis were determined to block democracy in Iraq, wire services said.