By Zaid Sabah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 3, 2008

BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 -- A series of bombings in northern and southern Iraq on Tuesday killed at least 15 Iraqis and injured dozens, while Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali," was sentenced to death for his role in crushing a Shiite revolt in 1991, after the Persian Gulf War. It was his second death sentence.

Meanwhile, in a report released Tuesday, the United Nations' assistance mission in Iraq expressed concern about widespread human rights abuses across the country, despite a drop in the overall violence.

Conditions in Iraqi prisons are a particular problem, U.N. officials said, at a time when thousands of Iraqi detainees are expected to be transferred next year from U.S. military custody to Iraqi authority.

The report estimated that there are 50,595 detainees in Iraqi prisons.

The U.N. mission "remains gravely concerned at continuing reports of the widespread and routine torture or ill-treatment of detainees, particularly those being held in pretrial detention facilities, including police stations," it said.

The report also raised concerns about killings of women and targeted assassinations of journalists, teachers and judges, as well as minorities such as Christians and Turkmens.

Near the town of Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi army convoy, killing five soldiers on their way to conduct house raids, said Capt. Muthana Ahmad, a spokesman for the Babil provincial police. Another policeman was killed by a bomb planted on his motorcycle, Ahmad said.

In the northern city of Mosul, a cart laden with explosives detonated near an elementary school, killing four civilians, including a woman and two children, and wounding 16, said Brig. Gen. Khalid Abdul Sattar, an Iraqi military spokesman in Nineveh province.

"Six schoolchildren were among the wounded," Sattar said.

In the city of Tall Afar, also in Nineveh province, a suicide bomber exploded his car at a security checkpoint in a mostly Shiite neighborhood, killing five civilians and wounding 30, including a policeman and six children, hospital and security officials said.

Majeed, who earned his nickname for his role in killing tens of thousands of Kurds with poison gas in the Anfal campaign in the late 1980s, showed no emotion when his death sentence was read. The former general received his first death sentence in the Anfal killings.

The court also sentenced to death another former senior Baath Party official, Abdul Ghani Abdul Ghafour, for his role in the 1991 case.

Abdul Ghafour shouted as the sentence was read: "Down with USA! Down with collaborators! I am a martyr for Iraq!"

Special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Dlovan Brwari in Mosul contributed to this report.