35+ Killed & 200 Wounded During Shiite Religious Festival - I Million Pilgrims Ordered To Leave
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BAGHDAD - More than 1 million pilgrims were ordered to leave the Shiite holy city of Karbala on Tuesday and police imposed a curfew after two days of violence _ including raging gunbattles between rival militias _ claimed at least 35 lives during a religious festival.
Nearly 200 people were wounded, security officials said, and the government sent reinforcements from Baghdad to quell growing unrest and help clear the city.
gunbattle between rival militias _ claimed at least 35 lives during a religious festival.
Nearly 200 people were wounded, security officials said, and the government sent reinforcements from Baghdad to quell growing unrest and help clear the city.
Security officials told The Associated Press that Mahdi Army gunmen, loyalists of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, attacked guards around the two Karbala shrines that were under the protection of the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.
In telephone calls to reporters in Karbala, gunfire and exploding mortar shells could be heard.
The security officials, who demanded anonymity for security reasons, said at least 180 people have been wounded. They include women and children.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said "entrances and exits to Karbala have been secured and more forces are on the way from other provinces," including Baghdad. The other officials said buses had been dispatched to Karbala to take pilgrims out of the city.
Gunshots rang out Tuesday in the area near the Shiite shrines which are the focal point of celebrations marking the birthday of the 12th and last Shiite imam, who disappeared in the 9th century. The festival was to have reached its high point Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
Thirty of the dead were killed in Tuesday's fighting, five others died in an outbreak of violence Monday night pilgrims tried to push past frustratingly slow security checkpoints near the Imam al-Hussein mosque.
He called the gunmen who fought police "criminals," adding that the curfew was imposed because of fears for the pilgrims.
A member of the city council said the center of town was in chaos with pilgrims running in all directions to escape the gunfire. No one, he said, was sure who was doing the shooting. He said a rocket-propelled grenade exploded near the shrine.
"We don't know what's going on," said the councilman, who would not allow use of his name for security reasons. "All we know is the huge numbers of pilgrims was too much for the checkpoints to handle and now there is shooting."
AP Television News pictures from the city, 50 miles south of Baghdad, of the Monday night melee showed pilgrims running helter-skelter as gunfire, apparently police shooting into the air, rang out in the streets near the mosque.
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Shiite Pilgrim Killed, and 12 Injured In Other Attacks
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BAGHDAD - A sniper killed a Shiite pilgrim on a Baghdad bridge Monday while another was killed and a dozen injured in other attacks as tens of thousands of faithful made their way to the southern city of Karbala for a major religious commemoration.
In order to protect the Shiite pilgrims on their way to Karbala, Iraqi security forces have mounted a major security operation. Sunni religious extremists, including al-Qaida in Iraq, have launched massive and deadly attacks against pilgrims during Shiite celebrations in the past.
Despite the security measures, one pilgrim was shot on Baghdad's Jadiriyah bridge and gunmen hiding in an orchard south of the capital opened fire on another group, killing one and injuring three others.
Nine other pilgrims were injured in two other assaults in Baghdad, and police prevented another attack, defusing two roadside bombs planted along the route to Karbala in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, officials said.
More than a million Shiites from throughout the world were expected to converge on the Shiite holy city for the celebrations, which reach their high point late Tuesday and early Wednesday. The Shabaniyah festival marks the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the 12th and last Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century.
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14,800 Iraqis Have Been Killed in Violence Across Iraq in the First 8 months of 07
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BAGHDAD - This year's U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.
Some of the recent bloodshed appears the result of militant fighters drifting into parts of northern Iraq, where they have fled after U.S.-led offensives. Baghdad, however, still accounts for slightly more than half of all war-related killings _ the same percentage as a year ago, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.
The tallies and trends offer a sobering snapshot after an additional 30,000 U.S. troops began campaigns in February to regain control of the Baghdad area. It also highlights one of the major themes expected in next month's Iraq progress report to Congress: some military headway, but extremist factions are far from broken.
In street-level terms, it means life for average Iraqis appears to be even more perilous and unpredictable.
The AP tracking includes Iraqi civilians, government officials, police and security forces killed in attacks such as gunfights and bombings, which are frequently blamed on Sunni suicide strikes. It also includes execution-style killings _ largely the work of Shiite death squads.
The figures are considered a minimum based on AP reporting. The actual numbers are likely higher, as many killings go unreported or uncounted. Insurgent deaths are not a part of the Iraqi count.
The findings include:
_ Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year _ an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year.
_ Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006. The United Nations and other sources placed the 2006 toll far higher.
_ Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.
_According to the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, the number of displaced Iraqis has more than doubled since the start of the year, from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31.
However, Brig. Gen. Richard Sherlock, deputy director for operational planning for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said violence in Iraq "has continued to decline and is at the lowest level since June 2006."
He offered no statistics to back his claim, but in a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon on Friday he warned insurgents might try intensify attacks in Iraq to coincide with three milestones: the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., the beginning of Ramadan and the report to Congress.
The U.S. military did not get all the additional American forces into Iraq until June 15, so it would be premature to draw a final statistical picture of the effect of the added troops.
But initial calculations validate fears that the Baghdad crackdown would push militants into districts north of the capital, including Diyala province where U.S. force and Iraqi soldiers have conducted major operation to clear its main city, Baqouba, of al-Qaida in Iraq fighters.
In July, the AP figures show 35 percent of all war-related killings occurred in northern provinces. The figure one year ago was 22 percent.
The final death count for August also will likely be further oriented to the north after the savage Aug. 14 attack by suspected al-Qaida truck bombers near the Syrian border in Ninevah province. At least 500 villagers from the Yazidi sect were killed in the deadliest civilian attack of the war.
In the first months of this year, many extremists fled to Baghdad and regions to the north after Sunni tribesmen in Anbar, the sprawling desert province west of the capital, turned on their erstwhile al-Qaida allies.
Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said many militants are trying to hang onto footholds in central Iraq.
"Most of the force shifts are still in the Baghdad ring and Diyala," he said in a recent interview, predicting more spectacular attacks in the days leading to next month's report to Congress by U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
"Will it lead to more bloody attacks as they try to exploit the American political debate? Yes."
Nora Bensahel, a military analyst at the Rand Corp., said that northern Iraq had become increasingly destabilized over the past few months.
The insurgents have made a "concerted effort to concentrate attacks in other parts of the country," Bensahel said, in part to escape the increased U.S. troop presence in Baghdad and in part to give the impression that no place in Iraq is safe.
Mostly, she said, the insurgents have shifted their focus to the Baghdad suburbs, but they are particularly keen to undermine the notion that northern Iraq is a "success story" for Washington and its key Iraqi partners _ including the Kurds who have maintained a near-autonomous state in the north since the early 1990s.
Staging attacks in the north "has a symbolic effect," she said.
And beyond that, Bensahel said the tactic puts the United States in a difficult situation.
"There isn't an ability to move north in any significant numbers without abandoning Baghdad" _ a change in strategy that Washington is not prepared to make, she said.
But a huge problem also looms in the south, the center of Shiite political and spiritual influence and the site of Iraq's main oil fields.
There are daily gunbattles between the Mahdi Army militia _ loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr _ and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the powerhouse Shiite political party that controls most of the bureaucracy and police forces in southern Iraq.
This month, the governors of two southern provinces loyal to the Supreme Islamic Council were killed in roadside bombings.
The clashes are expected to grow more intense as Britain draws downs its forces in southern Iraq over the coming months. The effect of the shrinking British presence is already being felt, said Cordesman in an assessment released Aug. 22.
"The end result was to turn the four provinces in southeastern Iraq over to feuding Shiite factions whose actions were mixed with corruption, extortion and links to criminal activities," he wrote.
And there are increasing signs that whole regions of the south are inclined to seek increased autonomy from the center _ moves that many Iraqis fear could lead to partition of the country.
In Najaf _ the spiritual heart for Shiites around the world _ the provincial spokesman, Ahmed Deibel, told AP early this month that the gas turbine generator there had been removed from the national electricity grid. The unilateral action has contributed to several nationwide power blackouts.
He said the provincial plant produced 50 megawatts, while the province needed at least 200 megawatts.
"What we produce is not enough even for us. We disconnected it from the national grid (Aug. 1) because the people in Baghdad were getting too much, leaving little electricity for Najaf," he said.
The No. 2 U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, has also expressed fears of a big insurgent attack in the final days before the report to Congress, but also claimed the offensives have shaken militant fighters in Baghdad and environs.
"Due to the constant pressure and depletion of their leadership, extremists have been pushed out of many population centers and are on the move, seeking other places to operate within the country," Odierno said last week.
"As a result, we are now in pursuit of al-Qaida and other extremist elements, and we'll continue to aggressively target their shrinking areas of influence," he said.
"Over the coming weeks, we plan to conduct quick-strike raids against remaining extremist sanctuaries and staging areas," Odierno said.
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Car Bomber Kills 7, Wounds 30
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BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded in northern Baghdad on Saturday, killing seven passers-by and wounding dozens of others in an apparent sectarian attack near the capital's most important Shiite shrine.
The attack in Kazimiyah came even as parts of Baghdad were shut down to vehicular traffic in an effort to protect Shiite pilgrims leaving for an annual religious commemoration in the southern city of Karbala next week.
The curbs on traffic were imposed late Friday and were expected to continue through the weekend to allow the pilgrims safe passage on their trek to celebrate the birthday of the "Hidden Imam," a 9th century religious figure who devout Shiites believe will return to Earth to usher in the rule of peace.
Just after noon, a bomb hidden in a parked car exploded in busy Oruba Square about 500 yards from the shrine of Imam Musa Kadhim, another revered Shiite figure.
A medic at the local hospital said seven people were killed in the explosion and 30 others were wounded.
No group claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell on Sunni religious extremists who consider Shiites as heretics and collaborators with the Americans.
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Iraqi Murders Summary From 8/13 - 8/19/07
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Outlined below is a summary of Iraqi Deaths for August 13 - August 19 2007. This information is provided by "Iraqi Body Count".
Sunday 19 August: 34 dead
Baghdad: 12 killed by mortars, including 2 children, Obeidi; gunmen kill Education Ministry official and his brother; motorcycle bomb, roadside bombs, eastern Baghdad; 14 bodies.
Rashad: body found.
Kirkuk-Hawija road: policeman's body found.
Saturday 18 August: 42 dead
Baghdad: mortars, Dora, Saha; 18 bodies.
Khalis: 7 killed in mortar attack, including 4-month-old girl.
Ramadi: missiles kill 2.
Iskandariya: 3 bodies.
Falluja: 9 bodies.
Friday 17 August: 35 dead
Baghdad: roadside bomb, Amin; 11 bodies.
Tarmiya: boy killed during US forces clashes with insurgents.
Kirkuk: roadside bomb kills 5.
Haditha: 3 bodies.
Falluja: 13 bodies.
Thursday 16 August: 32 dead
Baghdad: 9 killed by car bomb near al-Rusafi Square; 19 bodies.
Baquba: roadside bomb kills child.
Basra: 2 bodies.
Wednesday 15 August: 63 dead
Baghdad: gunmen kill 3 in Madaen, Sheikh Omar; roadside bomb, Zaafaraniya; mortars, Madaen; 15 bodies.
Mosul: car bombs kill 10, including a child.
Kirkuk: car bombs kill 5.
Khalis: minibus is ambushed at fake checkpoint, 5 killed, including 5-year-old child.
Buhriz: al-Qaeda attack on 'Baquba Defenders' kills 6, including a child.
Khanaqin: mass grave found containing 33 bodies.
Tuesday 14 August: 480-565 dead
Baghdad: mortars, Ur; US air raid kills 3, including 3-year-old Zahra, while she is sleeping on the roof of her house with her family, Sadr City; 15 bodies.
Qahtania, Adnaniya: 415-500 reported dead in 4 suicide tanker bomb attacks. It is the bloodiest attack since the invasion of the country in 2003.
Suwayra: gunmen shoot dead policeman's pregnant wife, brother and 12-year-old son.
Taji: truck bomb kills 10 on a bridge.
Ghraia: gunmen shoot dead 4 people sleeping on the roof.
Khalis: 15 bodies.
Kirkuk: the bodies of 2 Yazidi men, stoned to death, turn up at the morgue six days after they were kidnapped on their way to sell olives. Akbar Hassan, 38, and Ayad Khadir, 50, were taken to the Sunni village of al-Saeeda, where residents were ordered to stone them. After the villagers refused, the kidnappers killed them themselves.
Monday 13 August: 42 dead
Baghdad: mortars, Zayouna; US raid kills 5, Sadr City; US raid kills 2, Shula; roadside bomb, Obeidi; US forces shoot dead 2 people after roadside bomb explosion; 18 bodies.
Khanaqin: bomb blast kills 5.
Shirqat: gunmen kill 15-year-old girl.
Hilla: US forces shoot dead driver of car approaching patrol; 2 bodies.
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27 Killed, 60 Wounded
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Northern Iraq, a suicide truck bomber targeted a police agency in northern Iraq, killing at least 27 people and wounding 65, police and hospital officials said.
The attack occurred just before noon in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, and many of the casualties were civilians, according to the officials.
Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the attack bore all the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, including the use of a suicide bomber and the high number of civilian casualties.
"It appears to be something that is consistent with an al-Qaida-related attack," he told AP Radio in an interview.
Iraqi police and soldiers have frequently been targeted by militants seeking to disrupt U.S.-led efforts to enable the forces to take over their own security so foreign troops can go home.
Those killed Wednesday included 18 policemen and nine civilians, while 20 officers and 45 civilians were wounded, the officials said.
A bomb and small-arms attack against a security post shared by police and U.S. paratroopers also killed 13 Iraqi officers in Beiji in late June.
Jassim Saleh, 41, who lives about 500 yards from the blast site, said he saw an explosives-laden truck carrying stones strike the police station.
"It was a horrible scene. I can't describe it," he said. "The bodies were scattered everywhere. I was injured in my hand and a leg, but I took three wounded people to the hospital in my car."
Police said nine policemen and 10 civilians were killed, while 21 civilians and five officers were wounded.
A roadside bomb also targeted a police patrol in the center of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding another, along with two civilians, authorities said.
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2 Bombings Kill 6+ People, 20 Injured. Shiite Governor Killed
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BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb Monday killed the governor of the predominantly Shiite Muthanna province, police said, the second assassination of a top provincial official in just over a week.
Police blamed the Mahdi Army, which is nominally loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and has been involved in several recent clashes with its political rivals.
Two bombings also struck the Shiite district of Sadr City and a busy market district elsewhere in Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding more than 20.
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Death Toll Surpasses 400, Another Bombing Kills 9
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BAGHDAD - The Iraqi prime minister and president announced a new alliance of moderate Shiites and Kurds in a push to save the crumbing government Thursday, saying a key Sunni bloc refused to join but the door remained open to them.
The political pact came amid a grim backdrop: more bodies being pulled from the rubble of the most deadly suicide bombing assault of the war. The Interior Ministry spokesman set the death toll in northwestern Iraq to at least 400 from Tuesday's attacks against a small religious sect. Earlier, some authorities outside the government said at least 500 people died.
Tents, food aid, clean water and medicine were rushed to the area.
In Baghdad, a car bomb struck a parking garage in a central commercial district during the morning rush hour, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, police said. Smoke poured out of the seven-story concrete building, and food and merchandise stalls below were left charred.
The U.S. military also said two soldiers had been and six wounded the day before in fighting north of Baghdad, raising the number of American troops deaths to at least 44 this month.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the new agreement was the first step to unblock political stagnation that has gripped his Shiite-led government since it first took power in May 2006. But the announcement after three days of intense negotiations was disappointing because it did not include Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and his moderate Iraqi Islamic Party.
Al-Maliki has been criticized for having a Shiite bias and failing to stop Iraq's sectarian violence, which persists despite the presence of tens of thousands of extra U.S. troops.
"This agreement is a first step," al-Maliki said. "It is not final and the door is still open for all who agree with us on the need to push the political process forward."
At the news conference announcing the accord, al-Maliki was flanked by President Jalal Talabani, the leader of the northern autonomous Kurdish region, elder statesman Massoud Barzani and Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
The four men signed a three-page agreement they said ensures them a majority in the 275-member parliament that would allow action on legislation demanded by the U.S.
Their parties the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Dawa and the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Democratic Party of Kurdistan hold a total of 181 seats.
Al-Maliki called on the Sunni Accordance Front, which is the largest Sunni bloc with 44 seats and includes al-Hashemi's party, to return to the government and heal a rift that opened when the bloc's five Cabinet ministers quit the government.
The four-party agreement was unveiled four weeks before the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to deliver a progress report on Iraq to Congress.
"We have relegated efforts to topple the government to the past. We are now in a new stage," said al-Maliki's adviser, Yassin Majeed. "We will keep working to bring the Accordance Front back, but if they insist we will have a majority in parliament and bring in new ministers."
Al-Maliki previously has said he was ready to name rival Sunnis to the vacant Cabinet positions. He even mentioned reaching out to Sunni tribal sheiks who have joined forces with the Americans against al-Qaida in Iraq in the western Anbar province.
With that in mind, dozens of tribal leaders in Anbar met in the provincial capital of Ramadi and promised to "work together against terrorism, militias and al-Qaida until they're uprooted from the country." The chieftains also urged all blocs and political parties to put the nation above their private interests.
Emergency workers and grieving relatives in northern Iraq, meanwhile, pressed ahead with recovery efforts two days after a string of suicide truck bombings devastated the village of Qahataniya near the Syrian border. The attacks targeted Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect whose members are considered to be blasphemers by Muslim extremists.
A local official, Abdul-Rahman al-Shimri, said about 250 families were left homeless.
The Kurdish deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, toured the area and ordered the health and defense ministries to immediately send tents, medicine and other aid. He also gave $800,000 to provincial officials to distribute to the victims and relatives of the slain.
The violence dealt a serious blow to the Bush administration hopes of presenting a positive picture in the progress report to Congress, which comes as legislators face a fierce debate over whether to begin withdrawing American forces.
The U.S. military has blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the carnage, which crumbled buildings, trapping entire families beneath mud bricks and other wreckage as entire neighborhoods were flattened.
Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Thursday that at least 400 people were killed in the attack.
Dakhil Qassim, the mayor of the nearby Sinjar town, and other local officials said the number was as high as 500. The figures could not be independently checked because the area was under curfew and casualties had been taken to numerous hospitals.
"The numbers of victims reported missing by relatives and the figures we have for bodies received by hospitals are relatively close, but we will keep on searching at sites," Qassim said.
The death estimate far surpassed the previous bloodiest attack of the war _ 215 people killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City last Nov. 23. In 2005, an estimated 1,000 Shiite pilgrims were killed in a stampede near shrine in the capital fearing a suicide attacker was among them, but the rumors proved to be false.
U.S. officials believe insurgents have been regrouping across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad, and the bombings coincided with the start of a major offensive by American and Iraqi troops against militants in the Diyala River Valley.
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UPDATE: Deaths Now Exceed 250 From Yesterday's Attack
Good afternoon (again),
BAGHDAD - Rescuers used bare hands and shovels Wednesday to claw through clay houses shattered by an onslaught of suicide bombings that killed at least 250 and possibly as many as 500 members of an ancient religious sect in the deadliest attack of the Iraq war.
The U.S. military blamed al-Qaida in Iraq, and an American commander called the assault an "act of ethnic cleansing."
The victims of Tuesday night's coordinated attack by four suicide bombers were Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect that has been targeted by Muslim extremists who consider its members to be blasphemers.
The blasts in two villages near the Syrian border crumbled buildings, trapping entire families beneath mud bricks and other wreckage. Entire neighborhoods were flattened.
"This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will, almost genocide," Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, told CNN. He said that was evident from the fact Yazidis live in a remote part of Ninevah province that has been far from Iraq's conflict.
Mixon said last month that he proposed reducing American troop levels in Ninevah and predicted the province would shift to Iraqi government control as early as this month. It was unclear whether that projection would hold after Tuesday's staggering casualties.
Death estimates ranged widely.
Zayan Othman, health minister for Iraq's nearby autonomous Kurdish region, said 250 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and some 350 people were injured.
But the death toll was put as high as 500 by some local officials, including Hashim al-Hamadani, a senior provincial security official; Kifah Mohammed, director of Sinjar hospital; and Iraqi army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed. They agreed with Othman that about 350 were wounded.
None of the officials provided information on how they arrived at their estimates. The figures could not be independently checked because the area was under curfew and casualties had been taken to numerous hospitals.
Even the lower death estimate far surpassed the previous bloodiest attack of the war _ 215 people killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City last Nov. 23.
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Death Toll rises To Over 200, 300+ Wounded Yesterday, And 10 + Killed Today
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BAGHDAD - Rescuers dug through the muddy wreckage of collapsed clay houses in northwest Iraq on Wednesday, uncovering at least 200 victims of suicide truck bombings that the U.S. military blamed on al-Qaida.
The victims of the war's second-deadliest attack were members of a small Kurdish sect, the Yazidis, who have been the target of Muslim extremists who consider them infidels.
Police said separately that five people were killed in an ambush Wednesday on a minibus carrying civilians near Khalis, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, where suspected al-Qaida militants had set up a fake checkpoint. A 5-year-old was among the dead.
In the main northern city of Mosul, a bomb in a parked car killed a civilian and wounded ten others, police and army officers said. A police patrol appeared to have been the target.
South of Baghdad, meanwhile, a suicide car bomber killed two people and wounded seven, Iraqi police said.
Tuesday's four suicide truck bombers struck nearly simultaneously, killing more people than any other concerted attack since Nov. 23, when 215 people were killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City.
Some 300 people were wounded in the attacks on the Yazidis, an ancient religious community, said Dakhil Qassim, the mayor of the nearby town of Sinjar.
The carnage dealt a serious blow to U.S. efforts to pacify the country with just weeks before top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to deliver a pivotal report to Congress amid a fierce debate over whether to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
U.S. officials believe extremists are attempting to regroup across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad, and commanders have warned they expected Sunni insurgents to step up attacks in a bid to upstage the report.
Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said last month that he proposed reducing American troop levels in Ninevah and predicted the province would shift to Iraqi government control as early as this month. It was unclear whether that projection would hold after Tuesday's staggering death tolls.
Qassim said the four trucks approached the town of Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, from dirt roads and all exploded within minutes of each other. He said the casualty toll was expected to rise.
"We are still digging with our hands and shovels because we can't use cranes because many of the houses were built of clay," Qassim said. "We are expecting to reach the final death toll tomorrow or day after tomorrow as we are getting only pieces of bodies."
"The car bombs that were used all had the consistent profile of al-Qaida in Iraq violence," U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner told reporters in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
The U.S. military issued a statement putting the death toll in the Qahataniya bombings at 60. The Iraqi estimate of more than 200 deaths was based on body counts from local hospitals and morgues to which U.S. officials had no access.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement blaming the bombings on "terrorism powers who seek to fuel sectarian strife and damage our people's national unity."
The Yazidis are a primarily Kurdish religious sect with ancient roots that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians. Yazidis, who don't believe in hell or evil, deny that.
The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday's bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are "anti-Islamic."
The sect has been under fire since some members stoned a Yazidi teenager to death in April. She had converted to Islam and fled her family with a Muslim boyfriend, and police said 18-year-old Duaa Khalil Aswad was killed by relatives who disapproved of the match.
A grainy video showing gruesome scenes of the woman's killing was later posted on Iraqi Web sites. Its authenticity could not be independently verified, but recent attacks on Yazidis have been blamed on al-Qaida-linked Sunni insurgents seeking revenge.
A curfew was in place Wednesday across towns west of Mosul, and U.S. and Iraqi forces were conducting house-to-house searches in response to the bombings, according to Iraqi police and Army officers who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns. Twenty suspects were arrested, they said.
Meanwhile, U.S. troops killed 11 suspected terrorists and detained four others in operations against al-Qaida in central and northern Iraq, the military said in a statement.
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175+ Killed, Over 200 Injured
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BAGHDAD - Four suicide bombers hit a Kurdish Yazidi community in northwest Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounded 200 others, the Iraqi military said.
The bombs tore through communities near Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, said Abdul-Rahman al-Shimiri, the top government official in the area, and Iraq Army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.
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Cheney Admits "Quagmire" if US Invaded Baghdad
Good morning,
Please check this out if you have the chance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I
By E&P Staff
Published: August 12, 2007 10:20 AM ET
NEW YORK It's not the first time that citizen "investigative journalists" have uncovered some embarrassing, or telling, nugget from the past that apparently remained buried for years. But it has happened again with the posting of a now wildly popular video on YouTube that shows Dick Cheney explaining in 1994 that trying to take over Iraq would be a "bad idea" and lead to a "quagmire."
The people who put it up come from a site called Grand Theft Country, the on-screen source appears to be the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and the date on the screen is April 15, 1994. That looks right, by the age of Cheney.
Posted on Friday, it had received over 100,000 hits by this morning, after being widely-linked around the Web. The transcript of this segment is below.
Cheney had helped direct the Gulf War for President George H.W. Bush. That effort was later criticized for not taking Baghdad and officials like Cheney had to explain why not, for years. Some have charged that this led to an overpowering desire to finish the job after Cheney became vice president in 2001.
Here is the transcript. The YouTube address is at the top of this email.
*
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
A: No.
Q: Why not?
A: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?
Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
57 + Killed Today, 40 + Injured
Good Morning,
BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber slammed his truck into a densely populated residential area in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar on Monday, killing at least 28 people, including 19 children, local authorities said.
The attack occurred in a crowded Shiite neighborhood of the religiously mixed city, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.
The powerful blast caused houses to collapse in the morning as many families were getting ready for the day ahead, and officials said the death toll could rise.
"Rescue teams are still searching for casualties among the rubble," said Ali Abbo, the head of the human rights committee.
He said the hospital in Tal Afar had been filled to capacity, forcing the ambulances to take many victims to Dahuk, about 45 miles to the north.
At least 40 others were wounded in the attack, said Brig. Gen. Rahim al-Jibouri, commander of Tal Afar police.
The attacker drove a dump truck filled with explosives and covered with a layer of gravel, Brig. Gen. Najim Abdullah said, adding that at least 19 children were among the 28 killed.
Within an hour of the attack, authorities imposed a complete curfew on the city, he said.
At least 29 people were killed or found dead elsewhere in Iraq, according to police who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to disclose the information. Those included the bodies of five soldiers who had been ambushed by gunmen as they were on their way home for vacation the night before north of Tikrit and nine civilians killed by a roadside bomb that struck during rush hour in a predominantly Shiite area near Baghdad.
Have a nice day.
