Sociology Talk

Pope About Town · Guest

The US military also reported three more of its troops had been killed in
insurgent attacks, with two marines dead in Anbar province on Saturday and
one soldier killed in west Baghdad on Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070506/ts_afp/iraqunrest_070506143642

Violence across Iraq claims 59 lives

by Paul Schemm

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Insurgents killed at least 37 people in car bombings in
Baghdad Sunday, shattering a short-lived lull in sectarian violence in the
Iraqi capital as 59 people died in a spate of attacks.

One blast alone killed 33 people and wounded 63 as shrapnel scythed through
a commercial street in the southwest Bayaa neighbourhood, a mainly Shiite
area lying on one of the city's many dangerous sectarian faultlines.

At the same time, further north in the Sunni city of Samarra, militants
assaulted a police station with a car bomb and automatic fire, killing 12
officers and triggering a bloody street battle with US forces.

Both attacks bore the hallmarks of Sunni insurgent factions, in particular
Al-Qaeda's Iraqi branch, which has reacted to a US-
Iraq security crackdown by unleashing a spate of deadly suicide bombings.

A 10-week-old security plan in Baghdad has substantially reduced murders by
sectarian death squads, US military spokesmen said, but has been unable to
stem the wave of deadly car bombs.

"The initial indications are the levels of murders and executions ... in the
city have gone down quite a bit," said Major General William Caldwell on
Sunday. "We are still challenged, however, by the car bombs."

Nowhere was this more clear than in the shattered Bayaa commercial street,
where a row of shops had been devastated and the blast crater was awash with
blood and sewage.

"There is no checkpoint here to protect us," complained baker Abu Ali, whose
shop was demolished when the car bomb exploded outside in a crowded area
near a bus stop. "The government hasn't imposed its security plan here."

A second car bomb exploded near another bus stop a short distance from the
public works ministry in west Baghdad, killing at least four people,
security sources said.

In Samarra, it was a larger van bomb that rammed the gates of a police
station and exploded, killing local police chief Colonel Jalil al-Dulaimi
and at least 11 of his men.

US soldiers at a nearby base responded to the attack, killing at least two
insurgents, and two American soldiers sustained minor wounds in an ensuing
firefight, an AFP correspondent in the camp reported.

Around a dozen seriously wounded Iraqi policemen were evacuated by
helicopter to a US hospital.

The Samarra attack was the third in four days against police bases housing
Sunni officers recruited by the government to fight the Sunni-led insurgency
after several Iraqi tribes switched their allegiance to Baghdad.

Al-Qaeda has responded with deadly fury to the betrayal of its cause, but
both US commanders and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government
believe it represents a turning point in the war.

In the capital, US and Iraqi special forces raided a building in the Shiite
radical militia bastion of Sadr City and called in air strikes.

American commanders said the raid was against an Iranian-backed Shiite armed
cell involved in assembling armour-piercing explosives of the sort that have
caused serious casualties to US forces, and estimated that between eight and
10 militants were killed.

Although they did not find the Shiite militia commander they were looking
for, US forces did find 150 mortar rounds and an interrogation room in one
building, prompting them to destroy it.

"They found a room that clearly had bloodstains in it, handcuffs, a facial
mask ... all the signs exhibited the conditions we've seen before in other
rooms that have been used to kill people and conduct torture," said
Caldwell.

Northeast of the capital, in the confessionally divided province of Diyala,
seven people were killed by insurgents, including a family of four driving
south on the main highway. Two policemen were also killed in separate
attacks around Baghdad.

In the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, south of the capital, witnesses
reported seeing a member of the former ruling Baath party gunned down. The
mortuary confirmed receiving the bullet-riddled body.

The US military also reported three more of its troops had been killed in
insurgent attacks, with two marines dead in Anbar province on Saturday and
one soldier killed in west Baghdad on Friday.

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Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future
http://music.download.com/johnnyasia

Want to know what's really going on in Iraq?
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/wakeup.html

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If they will stop telling lies about Democrats,
we will stop telling the truth about them." -

Adlai Stevenson, former Illinois Governor
and democratic presidential candidate.