posted on May 28, 2007 02:53:49 PM new
Car Bomb Kills at Least 21 in Baghdad
Updated 4:32 PM ET May 28, 2007
Listen to Audio Clip
By RAVI NESSMAN
BAGHDAD (AP) - A suicide car bomber struck a busy Baghdad commercial district Monday, killing at least 21 people, setting vehicles on fire and damaging a nearby Sunni shrine, police and hospital officials said.
The blast went off at 2 p.m. in the Sinak market area on the east side of the Tigris River, just as U.S. and Iranian diplomats were wrapping up a historic meeting aimed at ending the violence wracking the country.
Insurgents carried out several mortar and car bombing attacks throughout the capital Monday and even waged a lengthy gunbattle with police in broad daylight. The wave of violence, which killed 36 people across Baghdad, came despite a nearly 15-week-old U.S.-led security crackdown in the city.
Another 33 bullet-riddled bodies were found handcuffed, blindfolded and showing signs of torture in different parts of Baghdad, the apparent victims of ongoing sectarian violence.
The deadliest attack Monday was the car bombing in the Sinak district, near the Abdul-Qadir al-Gailani mosque.
AP Television News footage showed dozens of astonished people wandering among the scorched cars and debris that littered the scene. Firefighters in yellow helmets struggled to extinguish the fire as ambulances rushed to evacuate the wounded.
Ghaith Karim, a 38-year-old Shiite cloth merchant, was heading to a nearby bus station when he saw a fireball and heard the blast.
"It was tremendous. I felt the ground was shaking," he said. "When I reached the scene, I found legs, charred pieces of bodies and pools of blood. Casualties were being evacuated by civilian cars."
The television footage showed damage to the mosque's minaret, while the cleric in charge of the Sunni shrine, Mahmoud al-Issawi, said the blast damaged the building's dome as well.
"The enemies of Iraq are the only ones who benefit from this bombing. These enemies have targeted our homeland, religion and our brotherhood," al-Issawi told Iraqiya TV.
The blast also wounded 66, including three traffic policemen.
Earlier Monday, a battle raged between militants and police in the narrow alleys of another central Baghdad neighborhood after insurgents hijacked two minibuses and kidnapped at least 15 passengers, police said.
At least three policemen were killed and eight other people were wounded in the fighting, authorities said.
The buses were traveling from Baghdad's main bus station to the city's eastern Shiite neighborhoods about 10:15 a.m. when gunmen in three cars forced them to stop as they passed through the Sunni enclave of Fadhil.
The attackers took the passengers to a nearby abandoned medical center. A gunbattle broke out when Iraqi security forces arrived 30 minutes later, police said. Nine militants were arrested as they attacked security forces from nearby alleys with light weapons.
At least two U.S. helicopters hovered overhead and U.S. forces took up positions near the fighting, but were not directly involved, police said.
After 45 minutes, Iraqi security forces stormed the building, but the militants had already left, apparently with their hostages, police said.
In other attacks, a rocket landed near a gas station in the Shiite-dominated Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada on Monday afternoon, killing four people and wounding three others, police said. Hours earlier, two mortars slammed into a Karrada street, killing two people and wounding six others, police said.
A parked car bomb ripped through an outdoor market in southeastern Baghdad's Zafaraniyah neighborhood Monday evening, killing three civilians and injuring 10 others, police said.
A roadside bomb killed two people and injured another nine when it detonated under a parked car in the central Baghdad district of Bab al-Muadham, and a sniper targeting the entrance to Mustansiriyah University in eastern Baghdad killed a female student, police said.
In the turbulent northern city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed journalist Mahmoud Kassab, the editor of a local newspaper and the head of a local Turkoman movement, police said. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, 104 journalists _ not including Kassab _ have been killed since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Attacks on Iraqi security continued Monday, with four police officers in the northern city of Mosul killed in a suicide bombing and a police officer in Basra killed in a drive-by shooting, police said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on May 29, 2007 09:42:19 AM new
U.S.: 10 Memorial Day Deaths in Iraq
Updated 12:18 PM ET May 29, 2007
By RAVI NESSMAN
BAGHDAD (AP) - Ten American soldiers were killed in roadside bombings and a helicopter crash on Memorial Day, the military reported Tuesday, making May the deadliest month of the year for U.S. troops in Iraq.
In other violence, five Britons were kidnapped Tuesday from an Iraqi Finance Ministry office in Baghdad, according to Britain's Foreign Office, and two car bombings killed 40 people and destroyed a Shiite mosque in the capital, police said.
The American deaths raised the number of U.S. forces killed this month to at least 112, according to an Associated Press count assembled from U.S. military statements.
The Americans _ all from Task Force Lightning _ were killed Monday in Diyala as the United States commemorated Memorial Day, bringing the number of American forces killed this month to at least 110, according to an Associated Press count assembled from U.S. military statements.
In statements issued Tuesday by the public affairs office of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq office at Camp Victory at Baghdad Airport, the military said six of the soldiers died in explosions near their vehicles and two others were killed in the helicopter crash. The statements did not say if the helicopter was shot down or suffered mechanical problems.
There were conflicting reports on the nationality and number of those kidnapped. A high-ranking Iraqi government official, who would only release the information on condition that he not be named or identified by the ministry he worked in, said three Germans working for a German computer company had been abducted.
However, an official in the Finance Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear he would be fired for speaking with the media, said four people were abducted _ one German and three Britons.
The men were kidnapped by a group of gunmen wearing police commando uniforms who arrived at the ministry office _ down the road from the main Finance Ministry building _ in a huge convoy of white sports utility vehicles, which are often used by police, according to the two government officials and a police officer, who said use of his name could put his life in danger. Police have been accused of involvement in attacks in the past.
In Hamburg, Germany, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said German officials have been unable to confirm the kidnapping: "So far such reports, thank God, could not be substantiated and I hope it stays that way."
Britain's Foreign Office declined to confirm reports that British citizens were involved, but a government's crisis committee was to meet Tuesday in response to the reported incident, the Cabinet Office said.
Earlier this year, militants here kidnapped German citizens Hannelore Marianne Krause, and her adult son, Sinan, and threatened to kill them if Germany did not pull its troops from Afghanistan. German officials have not said what the mother and son were doing in Iraq, where they disappeared on Feb. 6. The fate of the two remains unknown.
Also, Tuesday afternoon, a parked minibus packed with explosives blew up in Tayaran Square, riddling cars with shrapnel, knocking over pushcarts and sending smoke into the sky, witnesses said. The blast killed 23 people and injured 68 others, a police official in the district said on condition he not be named. The official said his superiors refused to allow him to speak to reporters. Firefighters rushed to the scene and rescuers tried to pull the wounded out of cars, they said.
Yousef Qasim, 37, was working in his clothing shop 200 yards away when the blast tore through a line of buses waiting at the square, he said.
"I rushed there to see about four or five burning bodies," he said. "I saw flesh on the ground and pools of blood."
Shop owners grabbed their wares and tried to flee, fearing a second blast, said Talib Dhirgham, who owns a nearby laundry. Police who arrived at the scene confiscated the cameras of journalists who came to cover the attack, according to AP photographers and television cameramen who went to the scene.
More than an hour later, a pickup truck parked next to a Shiite mosque in the Amil district in western Baghdad exploded, completely demolishing the mosque, killing 17 people and wounding 55 others, according to a second police official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he felt use of his name would put his life in danger. The mosque was reduced to rubble and piles of brick, according to AP Television News footage. Cars were flipped over, charred and dented. Residents pushed debris off nearby roofs.
In other violence, gunmen in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, set up fake checkpoints on the outskirts of the city and abducted more than 40 people, most of them soldiers, police officers and members of two tribes that had banded together against local insurgents, a police official in the city said on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution.
The attacks came a day after U.S. and Iranian officials met in Baghdad under the auspices of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to try to end the violence here.
Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Tuesday criticized the talks as interference in Iraq's internal affairs and warned Iraqi officials not to participate in them.
"I call on the brave people to reject these negotiations," he said in a statement released by his office in the holy city of Najaf.
On Monday, 36 people were killed across Baghdad in a wave of attacks, according to an AP tabulation of reports from police officials who said they could lose their jobs if they provided the information. Another 33 bullet-riddled bodies were found dead, tortured and abandoned in different parts of the capital, the apparent victims of ongoing sectarian violence, said an official in an Iraqi ministry who has access to daily reports. The official said he would be dismissed if his superiors knew he was releasing the information to Western media outlets.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on May 29, 2007 01:28:41 PM new
Since you are having trouble comprehending "The sound of one hand clapping...", I'll explain it only once to you.
"You are you own audience"..
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
posted on May 29, 2007 06:13:12 PM new
No, I believe , since you two are my AUDIENCE, that your post bear , about one hand clapping, is symbolic of your total lack of respect and honor for the troops that died. You obviously consider their deaths a joke...how anti-American can you get !!!!????
Not one word from either of you two clowns about how horrible it is...two cowardly shrunken up old men with nothing to offer but cheering on the younger men to certain death and then joking about it....
posted on May 30, 2007 07:37:46 AM new
How SICK.
classic AND bear HAVE served our Nation....both during VN.
And what has sybil EVER done for her country.....nothing - not ONE thing.
Yea, it's EASY to see who's using who
How come Linda is not included in the group with Bear and Classic. After all she used to brag about her military experience and knowledge. Linda supposedly knew more than the rest of us. She is finally admitting she never served.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
----------------------------------
The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
[ edited by logansdad on May 30, 2007 07:38 AM ]
posted on June 12, 2007 02:17:55 PM new
U.S.-Iraqi Forces Raid Lollipop Factory
Updated 4:29 PM ET June 12, 2007
By KIM GAMEL
BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi forces on Tuesday raided a lollipop factory being used to make bombs, finding boxes of explosives and two tons of fertilizer in the basement of the facility in northern Iraq, an Iraqi officer said.
The entry room to the al-Arij factory was booby-trapped and the building was empty because the workers fled after apparently being tipped off to the raid, according to the officer, army commander Brig. Gen. Nour al-Din Hussein. He said an anti-aircraft gun was hidden on the roof.
Hussein, commander of Iraq's 4th Brigade, said the Christian owner of the lollipop factory was killed three years ago. He said the facility was currently rented to people whom police refused to identify for security reasons.
The troops, who found candy boxes filled with explosives, oxygen cylinders and two tons of fertilizer in the basement, spent three hours destroying the payload in controlled blasts in an industrial area of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Bodies are often found in the area, located in the city's eastern section. The U.S. military said it was looking into the report.
The discovery illustrated the challenges faced by U.S. and Iraqi troops trying to stop the unrelenting violence even as militants consistently find new ways to thwart stepped-up security measures.
A senior U.S. envoy met with Iraq's leader Tuesday in Baghdad at a time when the Americans are pressing the Shiite-led government to show progress on political reforms to bring the disaffected Sunni minority into the political process and stem support for the insurgency.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki assured Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte that his administration would persist in its efforts to pass a controversial oil law as well as a bill allowing former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to return to government jobs and join the military.
"A lot of missions are ahead of us, on top of them is developing our security forces to handle their national roles in fighting the al-Qaida terrorist group, Saddamists and militias to impose law and order in all the country," al-Maliki told Negroponte as the two men sat on gilded chairs in the prime minister's office in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have pinned their hopes on the adoption of the laws as well as a nearly 4-month-old security crackdown to quell sectarian attacks but Iraq's fractured political parties have failed to reach final agreement on any of them.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, warned al-Maliki on Sunday that the Iraqi government needs to make tangible political progress by next month to counter growing congressional opposition to the war.
He singled out the oil bill, which if approved is expected to encourage foreign oil companies to invest in Iraq and spur the country to attain its goal of doubling current production of 2.5 million barrels a day by 2010.
Al-Maliki's Cabinet signed off on the bill in February and sent it to parliament, a move that the Bush administration hailed as a major breakthrough. But parliament has yet to consider the legislation, which faces opposition from Sunnis who fear being left out of the wealth and Kurds who want greater control of oil fields in the north.
A man who helped draft the oil legislation offered a pessimistic assessment Tuesday at a news conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Tariq Shafiq, who runs a petroleum consulting firm in London, said "there is no sign of a compromise" that would lead to final approval by the parliament.
Shafiq blamed the holdup on a lack of security in Iraq, where he said "people do not know if they are going to live the next day," as well as on corruption.
The legislative body faced a new distraction after lawmakers voted Monday to replace the parliament speaker, whose behavior was viewed by many as unbecoming and occasionally erratic.
Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab, told a news conference Tuesday he had no intention of resigning. "The speaker of the Council of Representatives is not a toy in the hands of juvenile politicians," he said. "I refuse to resign and will take my case to the federal court if I must."
Lawmakers gave the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament, a week to name a replacement. Al-Mashhadani, a former physician once jailed by Saddam Hussein, will keep his seat but lose his position as speaker.
Violence persisted on Tuesday, with at least 45 people killed or found dead, including nine soldiers and civilians killed in clashes and drive-by shootings. Police said 15 al-Qaida militants also were killed in fighting with joint U.S.-Iraqi forces, although the military did not immediately confirm that.
Suspected Sunni insurgents also bombed and badly damaged a span over the main north-south highway leading from Baghdad on Tuesday _ the third bridge attack in as many days in an apparent campaign against key transportation arteries.
___
Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on June 13, 2007 08:29:48 AM new
BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi forces on Tuesday raided a lollipop factory being used to make bombs, finding boxes of explosives and two tons of fertilizer in the basement of the facility in northern Iraq, an Iraqi officer said.
So you propose not raiding bomb factories hiding as candy factory's?
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
posted on June 13, 2007 12:16:32 PM newU.S. and Iraqi forces on Tuesday raided a lollipop factory being used to make bombs, finding boxes of explosives and two tons of fertilizer in the basement of the facility in northern Iraq, an Iraqi officer said.
Is this going to be the Republican claim to fame. They can now say the found all the candy of mass destruction.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on June 19, 2007 07:55:54 AM new
75 Killed by Bombing at Baghdad Mosque
Updated 9:54 AM ET June 19, 2007
By LAUREN FRAYER
BAGHDAD (AP) - A truck bomb struck a Shiite mosque Tuesday in central Baghdad, killing 75 people and wounding more than 200, even as about 10,000 U.S. soldiers northeast of the capital used heavily armored Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles to battle their way into an al-Qaida sanctuary.
The troops, under cover of attack helicopters, killed at least 22 insurgents in the offensive, the U.S. military said.
The thunderous explosion at the Khillani mosque in the capital's commercial area of Sinak sent smoke billowing over concrete buildings, nearly a week after a bombing brought down the twin minarets of a revered Shiite shrine in the northern city of Samarra and two days after officials lifted a curfew aimed at preventing retaliatory violence from that attack.
Gunfire erupted shortly after the blast, which police said occurred in a parking lot near the mosque, causing the outer wall and a building just inside it to crumble.
Police and hospital officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution, said at least 75 people were killed and 204 were wounded, adding that the toll could rise as bodies were pulled from the debris.
The mosque's imam, Sheik Saleh al-Haidari, said it was a truck bomb and the explosion hit worshippers as they were leaving afternoon prayers.
"This attack was planned and carried out by sick souls, damaging the mosque's outer wall and collapsing my office and the room above it," al-Haidari told The Associated Press by telephone.
"There are number of bodies being pulled from the rubble and a number of worshippers were killed or injured," he said, adding that he was not inside the mosque when the blast occurred.
The Khillani mosque is named after a much-revered Shiite figure who, according to Shiite tradition, was one of four deputies anointed by the Imam Mohammed al-Mahdi, who disappeared in the 9th century and will return to restore justice to humanity.
AP Television News video showed a huge pile of rubble where the wall used to be, but its turquoise dome was intact. The Imam Ali hospital in the Shiite district of Sadr City was packed with victims, many badly burned.
Karim Abdullah, the 35-year-old owner of a clothing store, said he was on his way to pray at the mosque when the explosion caused his motorcycle to wobble, forcing him to pull over.
"I stopped in shock as I saw the smoke and people on the ground. I saw two or three men in flames as they were getting out of their car," he added.
The raids, dubbed "Operation Arrowhead Ripper," took place in Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province, and involved air assaults under the cover of darkness, the military said. The operation was still in its opening stages, it added.
The commander of Iraqi military operations in Diyala, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim al-Rubaie, said handcuffs, swords and electricity cables _ apparently used as torture implements _ had been seized from militant safe houses in the area.
The operation was part of new U.S. and Iraqi attacks on Baghdad's northern and southern flanks, which military officials said were aimed at clearing out Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida fighters and Shiite militiamen who had fled the capital and Anbar during a four-month-old security operation.
A top U.S. military official said American forces were taking advantage of the arrival of the final brigade of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to open the concerted attacks.
"We are going into the areas that have been sanctuaries of al-Qaida and other extremists to take them on and weed them out, to help get the areas clear and to really take on al-Qaida," the senior official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the operation. "Those are areas in the belts around Baghdad, some parts in Anbar province and specifically Diyala province."
The hard-line Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars denounced the joint operations in Diyala, calling them "barbaric acts" and promising they "will not stop the people from persisting in their efforts to gain their liberty, unity and independence."
Al-Qaida has proven to be an extremely agile foe for U.S. and Iraqi forces, as shown by its ability to transfer major operations to Baqouba from Anbar province, the sprawling desert region in western Iraq. There is no guarantee that driving the organization out of current sanctuaries would prevent it from migrating to other regions to continue the fight.
In recent months, the verdant orange and palm groves of Diyala have become one of the most fiercely contested regions in Iraq. The province is a tangle of Shiite and Sunni villages that has played into the hands of al-Qaida and allied militants who have melted into the tense region and sought to inflame existing sectarian troubles.
Al-Qaida has conducted public killings in the Baqouba main square and otherwise sought to enforce an extreme Taliban-style Islamic code. The terror organization's actions in the province have caused some Sunni militants, al-Qaida's natural allies, to turn their guns on the group with U.S. assistance and blessing. Some militant Shiites are likewise joining government forces in a bid to oust the foreign fighters and Muslim extremists.
Separately, the U.S. military announced the death of an American soldier in Baghdad. The soldier was killed by small arms fire during combat in an eastern section of the capital, a military statement said. No other soldiers were wounded in the attack, which took place Monday, it said.
The death brought to at least 3,528 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,889 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
In southern Iraq, police and hospital officials said the death toll reached 30 in clashes that continued into a second day between Mahdi Army fighters and Iraqi security forces in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Some 150 people were wounded, authorities said. The officials, who declined to be identified because they feared retribution, said most of the casualties were police officers or militiamen. A delegation from radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's office arrived in the city to try to end the fighting, according to the city council.
A curfew was imposed on Nasiriyah on Monday, and remained in effect a day later.
Iranian-made rockets were seized in raids in central Nasiriyah, police said.
In other violence reported by police, a roadside bomb killed the head of a Shiite tribe and two people traveling with him near Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
A roadside bomb also missed a police patrol but hit two civilian cars in the Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah in southeastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding five.
___
Associated Press writers Hamid Ahmed and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
