45+ Killed, Including Tribal Leaders
Good morning,
BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber apparently targeting a meeting of U.S.-allied Sunni sheiks penetrated layers of security and blew himself up in a hotel lobby on Monday, killing four tribal leaders and at least eight others, police reported.
The sheiks were associated with the Anbar Salvation Council, which had taken up arms to help drive extremists of al-Qaida in Iraq from the western province of Anbar.
The attack was among five suicide and other bombings Monday that killed at least 45 people across Iraq. In an unrelated incident, the U.S. command reported a U.S. soldier shot to death Monday in south Baghdad or its outskirts.
The bombing at the high-rise Mansour Hotel, on the west bank of the Tigris River in central Baghdad, struck at about noon as the lobby bustled with members of news media organizations headquartered at the hotel and other guests, witnesses said.
A man wearing a belt of explosives walked into the lobby, approached the group of sheiks meeting there, and detonated his bomb, said a police officer based at the hotel, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
He identified four tribal leaders killed as former Anbar governor Fassal al-Guood, sheik of the al-Bu Nimir tribe, Sheik Abdul-Azizi al-Fahdawi of the Fahad tribe, Sheik Tariq Saleh al-Assafi and Col. Fadil al-Nimrawi, both of the al-Bu Nimr tribe. Three of al-Guood's guards also were killed, the police officer said.
"It was a great breach of security because there are three checkpoints, one outside and two inside," said Saif al-Rubaie, a 28-year-old hotel worker who saw the blast.
After the blast, a member of the Anbar Salvation Council said in the provincial capital of Ramadi that the sheiks meeting at the Mansour Hotel had been dropped from the council "because they did not continue working with us." He said they had been meeting secretly with government officials, about unspecified matters.
The U.S. command here has pointed repeatedly to the Anbar group and its opposition to al-Qaida as an example for other tribes to follow elsewhere in Iraq.
Along with the 12 dead at the hotel, at least 21 people were reported wounded. The victim Al-Guood, a former Anbar governor, resided at the hotel, police said.
A noted Iraqi poet, Rahim al-Maliki, also was killed, said Iraqi Media Net, the government organization on whose television network al-Maliki appeared.
The Mansour, which also houses the Chinese Embassy and is the Baghdad home for a number of Iraqi parliament members, is just a half-mile from the heavily fortified International Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices are situated.
The attack was the fifth in a string of suicide and other bombings Monday morning, from Mosul and Beiji in the north to Hillah in the south. Two were aimed at U.S. targets.
Suicide bombers killed at least 13 Iraqi police officers in an attack on a joint U.S.-Iraqi security station in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military command said. At least nine other Iraqis were reported killed at the scene and 21 others were reported wounded. Five American soldiers also suffered minor wounds, said Lt. j.g. Karl Lettow, a U.S. command spokesman in Baghdad.
Initial police reports spoke of a single truck bomb, but the U.S. command later said two car bombs detonated about 8:20 a.m., damaging a police barracks and the outer wall of the joint station. That was followed by an attack by at least 30 insurgents firing small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, the command said.
Iraqi police and U.S. paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division repelled the attack, it said. The command statement said nothing about whether the reported nine dead civilians may have included insurgent casualties.
As one wounded Iraqi civilian told it, however, random gunfire erupted from the building after the blast.
"I was at the grocery market when the explosion occurred and I ran with others to the site to see if there were any casualties and I was shot by fire from the police station," said Khalaf Salim, 40.
About 45 minutes later, another suicide car bomb exploded at a joint U.S.-Iraqi army checkpoint in central Siniyah, nine miles west of Beiji, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding three, an Iraqi army officer reported. There were no reported U.S. casualties.
Earlier in the morning, a suicide car bomber struck a checkpoint near the governor's offices in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Hillah, killing at least eight people and wounding 31, police said.
It was the second such attack in Hillah in three days.
Three of the eight killed in the 6:30 a.m. explosion were policemen, as were at least four of the wounded, said a spokesman for the provincial police department.
Police officer Baha Abdul-Sadda, 21, said he saw a red sedan speeding toward the headquarters, surprising police at the checkpoint and on the building's roof.
"The suicide bomber took advantage of the early hour and intended to hit the metal barrier to get inside to hit the building, but the car exploded prematurely at the metal barrier," he said. Abdul-Sadda, who suffered a head injury when thrown against a wall by the blast, spoke from his hospital bed.
Hillah, the capital of Babil, has been the target of some of the deadliest car bomb attacks by suspected Sunni Muslim extremists in the four years of insurgency and sectarian killings in Iraq.
The fifth bomb was in a parked car that exploded in the center of the northern city of Mosul, killing one civilian and wounding 20 others, police Brig. Mohammed al-Wakaa said. He said there were no police or military targets at the site.
In other violence, two mortar rounds Monday morning struck Baghdad's Fadhil district, a Sunni enclave in the central city, killing two civilians and wounding three others, police said.
Iraqi police and other authorities often speak only on condition of anonymity, because of concerns over personal security or because they are not authorized to divulge information.
Have a nice day.
Several Killed and Wounded
Good afternoon,
In violence around Iraq on Sunday, a roadside bomb exploded at noon in central Samarra, north of Baghdad, killing four Interior Ministry special forces personnel in a passing utility vehicle, police reported. Farther north, Ninevah provincial police said gunmen in a speeding car shot and killed Ahmed Zeinel, a Shiite Kurdish member of the provincial council, as he left his house in Mosul on Sunday morning.
In the largely Shiite city of Hillah, south of Baghdad, a car bomb Saturday evening killed at least two people and wounded 18 others, a hospital official reported. Hillah has been the target of some of the deadliest car bomb attacks by suspected Sunni Muslim extremists in the four years of insurgency and sectarian killings in Iraq.
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At Least 75 Killed and 200+ Wounded At Shiite Mosque In Baghdad
Good morning,
BAGHDAD - 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.
Have a nice day.
Car Bomb Kills 2, Injures 3
Good Morning,
Happy Father's Day.
Here are some highlights of Iraqi deaths:
A car bomb killed two Kurdish security agents Sunday morning in Iraq's oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, police said.
The men were traveling in a civilian car through downtown Kirkuk when a parked car bomb exploded next to their vehicle, said police Brig. Sarhat Qadir. Three pedestrians were injured, he said.
Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city, lies 180 miles north of Baghdad.
South of the capital, a roadside bomb went off next to an Iraqi police patrol in Nasiriyah, wounding two policemen, authorities said. Nasiriyah is predominantly Shiite city about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Outside the scope of this Blog, but relevent:
KABUL, Afghanistan - An enormous bomb ripped through a police academy bus at Kabul's busiest transportation hub Sunday, killing at least 35 people in the deadliest insurgent attack in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
The thunderous explosion in Kabul, which sheared the metal sidings and roof off the bus, leaving only a charred skeleton, represented a leap in scale from previous Taliban or al-Qaida bombings here, raising the specter of an increase in Iraq-style attacks in Afghanistan.
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At Least 4 Killed By Car Bomber
Good morning,
KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of U.S. contract workers and military personnel in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul on Saturday, killing at least four civilians, officials said. A soldier opened fire on the crowd after the attack, killing one civilian.
The suicide attack in western Kabul also wounded four civilians and a foreigner, said Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal. He said an international military vehicle and seven civilian vehicles were damaged in the attack. The bomber also died.
Zabiullah Mujahid, who claims to speak for the Taliban, claimed the group's responsibility for the blast.
Witnesses gave a higher casualty count from the suicide attack than police, saying seven or eight people had died.
Maj. Sheldon Smith, a U.S. spokesman for troops training Afghan police and army soldiers, said U.S. contract workers and U.S. military personnel were in the convoy. He had no further details. A spokesman at the U.S. base at Bagram said workers with DynCorp, who are helping train Afghan police, were attacked.
A soldier on a Humvee "mistakenly" opened fire on the crowd after the suicide attack, killing one civilian and wounding three, said Zalmai Khan, deputy Kabul police chief. He said Afghans were angered over the shooting and wanted to demonstrate, but that police calmed the situation down.
But a crowd of 50 to 100 people still gathered, with some chanting "Death to America" and jabbing their arms at police.
One man in the crowd, Atta Mohammad, said the civilian killed by the U.S. soldier was a driver who had gotten out of his car to buy credit for his cell phone. "Nobody among us was doing anything wrong," Mohammad said.
"They are against us, they are against Afghans," said another, Abdul Rahim.
Smith said the coalition "never intentionally endangers the lives of innocent Afghan civilians" but said the Taliban routinely and intentionally uses explosive devices in heavily populated areas.
The blast came amid a wave of violence lashing Afghanistan, particularly the volatile south, including a suicide blast on Friday that targeted a NATO convoy at Tirin Kot in Uruzgan province, killing 10 people including five children and a Dutch soldier.
Kabul has been spared the worst of this year's bloodshed which has claimed 2,300 lives so far, mostly insurgents, according to an AP count based on figures from U.S., NATO, U.N. and Afghan officials.
Saturday's blast destroyed the attacker's car, wrecked other civilian vehicles including a taxi and shattered windows of roadside homes and shops.
"We were busy with our work making window frames. I heard a very strong sound, and when I turned around I saw a big fire in the street," said Mohammed Noor, 22, who owns a nearby carpentry shop. He said the blast fired bits of metal shorn from the attacker's car into his shop front.
Noor said he helped four seriously wounded people into cars to ferry them to hospital. He said at least seven people were killed and 10 were wounded _ a higher casualty toll than police offered.
The bomb apparently targeted a three-vehicle convoy of SUVs, damaging one although it was able to continue driving a quarter-mile down the road before coming to a halt with a punctured tire. U.S. armored jeeps arrived at the scene afterward suggesting the three SUVs were carrying American personnel.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Ministry of Defense said three soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Helmand province on Friday. It also said three "terrorists" _ an Arab, a Chechen and a Pakistani _ were killed during a U.S.-Afghan raid in Paktika province on Friday.
Meanwhile, a remote-controlled bomb exploded near a police vehicle on patrol in Nad Ali district of southern Helmand province on Saturday, wounding five police, said Bahram Aka, who was among those hurt. He spoke from his hospital bed in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
This spring supporters of the Taliban regime ousted by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 have increased bombings and suicide attacks, but NATO and US forces claim to have the rebels on the back foot with a wave of offensive operations in the south and east.
Taliban spokesmen have warned Afghan civilians to stay away from military convoys, saying militants do not intend to kill them, but suicide bombings commonly kill or wound far more civilians than military targets _ a fact NATO repeatedly points out.
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Askariya Shrine Bombed, 5 Iraqi Police Killed, 10 Wounded in Other Violence
Good morning,
BAGHDAD - Saboteur bombers destroyed the two minarets of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra early Wednesday, in a repeat of the 2006 attack that shattered its famous golden dome and unleashed a wave of retaliatory sectarian violence that still bloodies Iraq. Sunni extremists of al-Qaida were quickly blamed.
The assault on the Askariya Shrine, one of the holiest in Shiite Islam, immediately stirred fears of a new round of intra-Muslim bloodshed, and prompted the 30-member bloc of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to suspend its membership in Iraq's parliament, threatening a deeper political crisis.
To ward off a surge of violence, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki quickly imposed an indefinite curfew on vehicle traffic and large gatherings in Baghdad.
It wasn't clear how the attackers evaded the shrine's guards to mount the stunning operation, detonating the blasts around 9 a.m., and bringing down the two slender golden minarets that flanked the dome's ruins at the century-old mosque. No casualties were reported.
Policemen at the shrine were subsequently detained and will be questioned as part of the investigation, al-Maliki said.
In addition to ordering the curfew, al-Maliki's office said he met with the U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker to ask that U.S. reinforcements be sent to Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, and that U.S. troops in the capital go on heightened alert.
The U.S. command had no immediate comment on military moves. Crocker and Petraeus later released a statement calling the attack and "act of desperation" and "a deliberate attempt by al-Qaida to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife among the people of Iraq."
In neighboring Shiite Iran, which has been accused of funding and arming Shiite militias in Iraq, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed U.S. forces for failing to prevent the mosque attack, and threatened to halt regional cooperation to stop Iraq's spiraling violence.
In a nationally televised address, al-Maliki said he had ordered security forces to bolster protection of Iraq's religious shrines and mosques. The Shiite prime minister also warned against reprisal sectarian attacks.
An official close to the prime minister, citing intelligence reports and speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said the bombing was likely the work of al-Qaida, whose militants have recently moved into Samarra from surrounding areas.
The powerful blasts shook the town, sending a cloud of dust into the air, said Imad Nagi, a storeowner 100 yards from the shrine. "After the dust settled, I couldn't see the minarets anymore. So, I closed the shop quickly and went home," he said.
Police in the area around the shrine began firing into the air to keep people away, witnesses said, and Iraqi army and police reinforcements poured in. The Interior Ministry said a national police force was ordered to move immediately to Samarra.
A U.S. military official in the area, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said Samarra remained calm.
In western Baghdad, just before the curfew was to take hold, Shiite militiamen carrying light weapons fanned out across the religiously mixed Jihad neighborhood, police said. No violence was reported.
The reaction was swift in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq. Black banners were hoisted outside the Najaf residence of radical cleric al-Sadr, who called for three days mourning and peaceful demonstrations to mark the minarets' destruction and criticized the government for not doing enough to protect the site.
He also said the U.S. occupation is "the only enemy of Iraq" and "that's why everyone must demand its departure," or a timetable for its departure.
Later, in Baghdad, the 30 members of the Sadrist bloc in parliament issued a statement saying they were boycotting parliament until the government takes "realistic" steps to rebuild the Askariya shrine. The move by the Sadrists, whose support for al-Maliki has recently waned, is likely to weaken the Shiite-dominated government and delay adoption of a series of laws needed to build national reconciliation in Iraq.
Last year's surge in execution-style killings, largely blamed on Shiite militias, had begun to decline in Baghdad in February at the start of a major U.S.-Iraqi security push, but violence has recently been rising.
The Askariya shrine's dome was destroyed on Feb. 22, 2006, in a bombing blamed on Sunni Muslim militants believed linked to al-Qaida. The mosque compound and minarets had remained intact but closed afterward.
The mosque contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams _ Ali al-Hadi, who died in 868, and his son, Hassan Askariya, who died in 874. Both are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and Shiites consider them to be among his successors.
The shrine also is near the place where the 12th imam, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared. Al-Mahdi, known as the "hidden imam," was the son and grandson of the two imams buried in the Askariya shrine. Shiites believe he will return to Earth restore justice to humanity.
After last year's bombing, the mosque was guarded by about 60 Federal Protection Service forces and 25 local Iraqi police who kept watch on the perimeter, according to Samarra city officials.
In the immediate aftermath of that bombing, U.S. officials and others had promised to help rebuild the landmark dome, completed in 1905, but no rebuilding has begun.
Iraq has been plagued by violence since the war started in 2003, but the carefully orchestrated 2006 explosion touched a nerve. The bombing unleashed Shiite militias, who ignored appeals for calm and instead attacked Sunni clerics and mosques. Nearly 140 people were killed the next day.
In other violence, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a police station in a town near the Iranian border, killing five Iraqi policemen and wounding 10, the mayor said. In the western city of Ramadi, a suicide bomber killed four policemen at a checkpoint, police said.
In northern Iraq, militants blew up part of a bridge in the country's fourth attack on a span in as many days, police said.
The attackers had planted explosives under the Zikaytoon overpass near Kirkuk, about 180 miles north of Baghdad, said police Brig. Sarhat Qader. No one was wounded, he said.
Have a nice day.
___
11 + Killed, Another Bridge Blown Up
Good morning,
On Sunday, a martyr struck a vital bridge outside the Iraqi capita. It appeared that a northbound driver stopped and detonated his vehicle beside a support pillar, said Lt. Col. Garry Bush, an Army munitions officer who was in a U.S. civilian convoy that arrived two minutes after the blast. The convoy also carried an Associated Press reporter and photographer.
A U.S. Army checkpoint and a tent structure, apparently a rest area, fell into the rubble.
Security guards with private security firm Armor Group International, all ex-military, and others in a passing convoy rushed to the ruins. They found a scene of confusion and worked with a U.S. Army quick reaction force for some 45 minutes to retrieve trapped men, scrambling over the fallen concrete.
At one point, a Bradley armored vehicle with a tow chain pulled a slab off a pinned victim to free him.
Then a shout went up, "Morphine! Morphine!" and a black T-shirt-clad Briton administered painkiller to the freed man.
"Another poor fellow looked crushed beneath a concrete slab," said Donald Campbell, a 40-year-old from Inverness, Scotland.
Iraqi police said the overpass was a vital link across the highway for villagers in the area because the other spans have been taken over by U.S. forces. A police officer in nearby Iskandariyah, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said a curfew had been imposed on vehicles and pedestrians after the attack and earlier bombings of a mosque and a Sunni political party's headquarters that caused some damage but no casualties.
Drivers coming from both directions were told to turn back while the U.S. forces worked on Monday, causing traffic jams for much of the morning until the word spread to avoid the route.
Manhal Adil, a 42-year-old driver of a minibus that taxis passengers between Baghdad and Samawah, a Euphrates River city about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad, said he had to take a dangerous detour.
"Now, we are forced to take the old road, which is dangerous and full of police checkpoints that consume our time," he said.
At least 11 Iraqis were killed in attacks elsewhere on Monday, according to police officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
Have a nice day.
12 Iraqi Soldiers Killed In Bombing 6 + Detainees Killed in Rocket Attack
Good morning,
BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army checkpoint outside the capital on Saturday, killing at least 12 soldiers in the deadliest of a series of attacks against Iraqi forces as they try to take over their country's security.
The explosion happened near the gate of the army unit's headquarters in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the capital, provincial police spokesman Capt. Muthanna Khalid said, giving the casualty toll.
In Baghdad, a parked car bomb struck a convoy of Iraqi police commandos and gunmen opened fire on police on a foot patrol. In Baqouba, two suicide bombers on foot blew themselves up at a police checkpoint at an intersection, killing a policeman.
Iraqi military and police forces are frequent targets of al-Qaida-linked insurgents bent on ending the government's cooperation with U.S. troops in Baghdad and surrounding areas.
In southern Iraq, an apparent rocket attack at the U.S.-run Camp Bucca detention facility killed at least six detainees and wounded 50, the military said. No American casualties were reported.
Have a nice day.
2,770 Civilians Killed In Iraq In May 2007
I just discovered a recounting of weekly Iraqi civilian deaths on the Iraqi Body Count website. This is a very sombering read:
A Week in Iraq
A week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties by Lily Hamourtziadou. The analyses and opinions presented in these commentaries are personal to the author. Email
lily@iraqbodycount.orgFear
At Baghdad’s Yarmouk hospital, a man and his wife, both injured in a bomb attack that killed 15 people in Amil, were lying on stretchers in the emergency room. The man, whose right foot had been amputated, screamed at his wife, who had shrapnel wounds and was unconscious: ‘Fatima! Where are the kids, Fatima?’ (LA Times, 30 May).
Iraqis live in a fear few of us can even imagine, a fear even fewer of us will ever experience. Police and morgue officials giving information on daily casualties, do so in anonymity, fearing they could be targeted by militants. Unclaimed and unidentified bodies fill the morgues every month, their relatives too frightened to identify and claim the bodies. They join thousands of others buried in mass graves.
In May 2,770 civilians were killed in Iraq, an average of 89 a day. The violence is up from April, when there were 2,590 reported civilian deaths, an average of 86 a day; in March the toll was 2,731, an average of 88 a day.
This past week alone, 680 civilian lives were snuffed out in violent attacks.
On Monday 28 May 125 die, 100 of them in Baghdad. The dead include 14 policemen, a college student, a newspaper editor and a translator.
On Tuesday 29 May, the worst day of the week, 150 lose their lives. Two car bombs kill 49 people in Baghdad, a journalist is killed by gunmen, together with 7 members of his family near Falluja, and 78 bodies are found in Baghdad, Suwayra, Baquba, Balad, Toz and Abu Tomar.
On Wednesday 30 May over 80 civilians die. Among the dead, 2 elderly people sleeping on the roof of their homes (common in Iraq during the summer, to escape the intense heat) killed by a US helicopter during an air raid over Sadr City. Militia raids in Amil, Baghdad, kill 21 Sunni men. Iraqi TV, Al-Iraqiya, reports that Sadr City residents call upon officials to intervene to stop the raids and shelling of the city by the Multinational Forces. ‘Citizens in the city affirmed that military operations in their city cause a large number of innocent casualties…The evenings are filled with the sounds of lethal ammunitions and terrifying raids. The residents do not sleep quietly or safely. No single day passes without the Multinational Force raiding and attacking several houses and causing the martyrdom and wounding of dozens of innocent people.’ (Al-Iraqiya 1 June)
Around 90 die on Thursday 31 May. In the worst incident, a suicide bomber kills 30 in a police recruitment centre in Falluja. Gunmen kill a lecturer in Fine Arts in Basra, while an Associated Press reporter is shot dead in Baghdad. The 26-year-old cameraman leaves a wife 8-months pregnant with their first child. 45 bodies are found in 7 cities, and 14 unidentified bodies are buried in Kirkuk.
Around 75 die on Friday 1 June. The dead include 3 children (7, 9 and 11 years of age) killed as a US tank fires on suspected insurgents near Falluja. The insurgents, who were thought to be planting a bomb, escape. Another US raid on Sadr City kills 2, one of them an ambulance driver. Gunmen kill 7 at a fake checkpoint in Khalis, and 33 bodies are found in Baghdad, Baquba and Khalis.
On the quietest day of the week, Saturday 2 June, 57 civilians die. Among them an Imam and a Sheikh, shot dead in Baghdad, and 8 killed by mortars in Fadhil, Baghdad –one of them a child. Police find 40 bodies in 5 cities. More than 2,000 people march the streets of Shula, a Shiite district in Baghdad, to demand improvements in basic services like electricity and water. The demonstrators denounce the United States, Israel and the US-backed Iraqi government.
On Sunday 3 June the dead exceed 100. A car bomb kills 10 in a market in Balad Ruz, gunmen kill 5 at a fake checkpoint near Baquba, US air strikes kill 5 in Sadr City and 2 in Dhilu’iya, while gunmen shoot dead a Catholic priest, 31-year-old Father Ragheed Ganni, and 3 deacons in Mosul. Police find 64 bodies in 6 cities. Another 41 unclaimed bodies are buried in Kirkuk.
Meanwhile, General Raymond Odierno, the number 2 head of US forces in Iraq, has stated that ‘the surge is not yet fully in place, and it will take time and patience before we begin to realise its effects.’ In fact, ‘we could be in Iraq for 50 years’ according to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. The sad truth is that the US will never leave Iraq. Despite the massive civilian death toll, despite the massive rise of terrorism, despite the rapidly increasing deaths of American soldiers.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has apologised for the deaths of American troops in his country. After a month when 2,770 Iraqi civilians die, the Iraqi President apologises for the deaths of 126 American soldiers. He continues: ‘Everyone in Iraq knows that…the United States saved the Iraqi people…the majority of people are for having the American Army.’ He really speaks for himself, as neither he nor anyone else in the Iraqi government would survive for one day if the US army that backs them withdrew from Iraq.
As my work for this column comes to an end, my thanks go to all those news reporters, war correspondents and journalists working for Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France Press, Al-Jazeera, Al-Sharqiya, Al-Iraqiya, the BBC, the LA Times, the NY Times, the Washington Post, the National Iraqi News Agency, the Voices of Iraq, the Voices of America, the Kuwait News Agency…and many others. Many of them risk their own lives daily to provide us with information on this war and this occupation. Without their bravery, there wouldn’t be an Iraq Body Count.
Thanks also to our readers and their comments. You all make our and their work worthwhile.
As another summer starts, Iraqi life will continue to be dominated by fear, daily killings, terrorism. For them, it is another summer under occupation. For the rest of us, a happy summer, without fear.
Permalink:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/47/Have a nice afternoon.
47 Bodies Discovered, + 15 Killed In Multiple Bombings, Shootings & ETC.
Good afternoon,
Baghdad, Iraqi authorities reported at least 15 people killed Monday in eight bombings, shootings and other incidents. In addition, at least 47 bodies were discovered nationwide, apparent victims of sectarian or political killings; they included 28 bullet-ridden bodies in Baghdad, most handcuffed, blindfolded and showing signs of torture.
Have a nice day.
