Friday, April 20, 2007
AP: Another suicide attack hits Baghdad after bloodiest day since US surge began
A mother carries the body of her son Montathar Qassim, age 6, victim of the previous days bombing in Baghdad, for the funeral in Najaf. (AP Photo/Alaa Al-Marjani)
Another suicide attack hits Baghdad after bloodiest day since US surge began
| Lauren Frayer |
| Associated Press |
Thursday, April 19, 2007
BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber breached Baghdad's heavy security presence again Thursday, killing a dozen people in a mostly Shiite district a day after more than 230 people died in one of the Iraq war's deadliest episodes of violence.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called the violence in Baghdad an "open battle" — nine weeks into a U.S.-led effort to pacify the capital's streets.
Despite new barricades and checkpoints erected as part of the security crackdown, only a fraction of the cars in Baghdad — a city of six million residents — are searched at all. Many of the suicide car bombs explode at the checkpoints, either targeting Iraqi troops or detonating a moment before they are discovered.
Thursday's bomber struck within 800 metres of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's home in the mostly-Shiite Karradah district where one of Wednesday's bombs exploded. Talabani was not believed to have been the target.
The bombing killed at least 12 people and wounded 34. Two Iraqi soldiers were among the fatalities.
The U.S. military on Thursday announced three more troop deaths — two soldiers killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, and another soldier killed the same day in a small-arms-fire attack in a southwestern area of the capital.
With several thousand U.S. soldiers still expected to arrive in Iraq and U.S. commanders urging patience, the Baghdad security plan was already showing signs of weakness. One week ago, a suicide bomber slipped through barriers around the U.S.-guarded Green Zone, killing an Iraqi legislator inside the parliament building.
The same day, a truck bomber collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River, killing 11 people and sending cars careening into the water.
Thursday's bombing hit hours before U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates arrived on an unannounced visit, saying he intended to tell Iraqi leaders that America's commitment to a military buildup in the country was not open-ended.
Meanwhile, grieving relatives retrieved bodies from hospital morgues and passers-by gawked at the giant crater left by a market bomb in one of Wednesday's four attacks.
Many of the more than 230 Iraqis killed or found dead nationwide were buried in quiet ceremonies before Thursday's noon prayer, according to Muslim tradition. Other bodies laid in refrigeration containers, still unidentified, at morgues across Baghdad.
In Sadr City, relatives flocked to Imam Ali Hospital to claim the bodies of loved ones. A man held his shirt over his mouth and nose as he moved past decaying bodies. Nearby, four men loaded a casket onto a minibus.
The most devastating of Wednesday's blasts struck the Sadriyah market as workers were leaving for the day, destroying a lineup of minibuses that had come to pick them up. At least 127 people were killed and 148 wounded, including men who were rebuilding the market after a Feb. 3 bombing left 137 dead.
On Thursday, collective wakes were being held for multiple victims in huge tents erected in narrow alleys and at nearby mosques within view of the blast site. Onlookers gathered around a crater about three metres wide and one deep, left by the force of the explosion.
The car bombing at the market appeared meticulously planned. It took place at a pedestrian entrance where tall concrete barriers had been erected after the earlier attack. It was the only way out of the compound, and the construction workers were widely known to leave at about 4 p.m. — the time of the bombing.
U.S. military spokesman Maj.-Gen. William Caldwell told The Associated Press that "al-Qaida in Iraq" was suspected in the bombing.
Gates' visit to Iraq, his third since taking over as defence secretary in December, came a day after President George W. Bush met congressional leaders to discuss the impasse over legislation to provide funds for the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Gates said he has had no discussions with the White House about an absolute deadline by which the Pentagon must get additional funding to be able to maintain the mission.
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Bomber kills 10 as war-weary Iraqis vent anger
BAGHDAD: A suicide car bomber has killed 10 people in Baghdad, a day after militants killed almost 200 in the capital's bloodiest day since the 2003 US-led invasion, despite a security crackdown.
War-weary Iraqis vented their anger at the Baghdad security plan which has cut sectarian murders blamed on Shi'ite militias but failed to stop car bombings and other large-scale attacks blamed on al Qaeda.
Police said a bomber rammed his car into a fuel tanker in the religiously-mixed neighbourhood of Jadriya, also wounding 21 people. Black smoke billowed into the sky as flames engulfed the car and the tanker, television footage showed.
Suspected Sunni al Qaeda militants detonated a string of bombs in mostly Shi'ite areas of Baghdad in the worst day of violence in the city since the last-ditch plan to stop Iraq sliding into civil war was launched in February.
In the worst attack, 140 people were killed in a truck bombing in the Sadriya neighbourhood.
The US military said the earlier blasts appeared to be the work of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and were coordinated.
In Sadriya, angry residents cursed the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for failing to protect them. Smoke still billowed from the debris and sandals and glass littered the ground in Sadriya.
"The government is talking about the security plan but dozens of people are dying every day. No one is protecting us," Sabah Haider, 42, told Reuters as he stood beside a dozen incinerated minibuses.
Rahim Ali, also in Sadriya, said: "The Americans say they are here to protect the Iraqi people but they are doing nothing".
SECURITY
The security plan calls for 30,000 extra US troops and thousands of Iraqi soldiers to be deployed mostly in Baghdad.
While it has curbed militia murders, the car bombings have raised fears of a new outbreak of reprisals, especially among the Mehdi Army militia of anti-US Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The Mehdi Army, blamed for widespread killings of Sunni Arabs after a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra was destroyed in February 2006, has kept a low profile during the crackdown.
Maliki said on Wednesday Iraqis would take security control of the whole country from foreign forces by the end of the year.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in Tel Aviv the bombers were trying to disrupt national reconciliation and expressed fears Shi'ites could be losing patience with Maliki's government and US forces.
"We can only hope that the Shi'ites will have the confidence in their government and in the coalition that we will go after the people that perpetrated this horror," Gates said.
Maliki, from Iraq's majority Shi'ite community, is under pressure to say when foreign forces will leave Iraq and maintains they will only go when Iraqi security forces are ready to replace them.
But Wednesday's attacks underscored the challenges for Iraqi forces in taking charge of overall security from more than 150,000 US and British troops.
Hours before the bombings, at a ceremony marking the handover of the fourth province of Iraq's 18 provinces from US-led troops to Iraqis, Maliki had again appealed for reconciliation between Shi'ites and the once-dominant Sunnis.
Maliki ordered the arrest late of the Iraqi army commander in charge of security in Sadriya for failing to secure the area.
Brigadier Qassim Moussawi, the Iraqi spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, said the attack in Sadriya was carried out by a truck bomb.
