Winks Blog

5 Killed Outside Shiite Shrine, US Blamed For 19+ Civilian Killings

Good Morning,

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's influential Association of Muslim Scholars and the country's largest Sunni Arab political party on Saturday condemned a deadly U.S. military attack they say killed civilians. Separately, a suicide car bomb struck near a Shiite shrine, killing at least five people.

The U.S. command said Friday's raid and airstrike killed 20 insurgents, but the association and the Iraqi Islamic Party joined a village mayor who alleged that the attack killed at least 19 civilians, including women and children.

On Saturday, about 1,000 residents of the predominantly Sunni village of al-Ishaqi in the volatile province of Salahuddin held a funeral for the 19 dead, shouting slogans such as "Down with the occupiers," "Long live the resistance," and "There is no God but Allah."

Also Saturday, a suicide car bomb exploded outside of the Al-Abbas shrine in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad. The golden dome and minarets of the shrine did not appear to be damaged in video footage shown on Iraqi state TV, but the powerful blast set many parked cars on fire in a nearby street, and two Iraqi men with bloody faces could be seen running through heavy black smoke past the body of another victim of the attack.

Rahman Meshawi, the city's police spokesman, said five Iraqis were killed and 44 wounded, 15 of them seriously.

A main goal of Sunni Arab insurgent groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq has been to spark sectarian violence by attacking sites considered holy by the country's Shiite majority. Attacks by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, and revenge killings in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas of cities such as Baghdad, often kill scores of Iraqis a day.

Karbala is considered Iraq's second holiest Shiite city after Najaf, which is 45 miles to the southeast. Shiites make pilgrimages to both locations and bury their dead in large cemeteries there.

At least 47 other Iraqis were killed or found dead on Friday, including 25 who were struck in a mortar attack that night on a poor Shiite neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Havew a nice day.

posted by Wink @ 10:57 AM