"Violent burst across Iraq leaves 14 dead; Officials seem to be targets; top vote-getters meet on impasse" by Timothy Williams, New York Times | June 30, 2010
BAGHDAD — A burst of violence across Iraq yesterday took the lives of 14 people, most related to what appears to be a campaign of assassinations aimed at officials amid the country’s extended political crisis.
The two top vote-getters during Iraq’s parliamentary election in March, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and former prime minister Ayad Allawi, met yesterday, but there was no immediate announcement that the two had broken new ground in their impasse over the formation of the next government.
Maliki visited Allawi at his Baghdad office, and the two men shook hands warmly before sitting down to a closed-door meeting.
Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the prime minister, described the meeting as “positive and good’’ but stressed that no deals were reached....
Among the unresolved issues is whether Maliki will continue as prime minister.
The targets across the country yesterday included two police officers in the city of Baiji, in northern Iraq, who died after a car rigged with explosives was detonated on the main street as a police convoy drove by, the authorities said.
The bomb exploded just outside a crowded marketplace shortly before 10 a.m. In all, seven people were killed; 17 others were injured.
Lieutenant Colonel Dawoon al-Sahin of the local police said he believed that the bomb may have been aimed at one of the slain officers, Lieutenant Colonel Hussein al-Qaisi, who handled police personnel issues.
In Baghdad, a staff member of the capital’s provincial council who focused on social welfare programs was killed after a bomb that had been attached to his vehicle exploded as he passed through a security checkpoint, the authorities said. Two police officers were wounded in the attack....
Another of those killed yesterday was identified as Brigadier General Wareed Johan, a top supply officer in the Iraqi Army. He was killed when an adhesive bomb on his car detonated, the police said. Another officer in the car, Colonel Talib Abdul Rahman, was wounded.
A roadside bomb in Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood killed an unidentified motorist and wounded four others, the police said.
In the Diyala Province town of Khalis, four members of a single family, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed in a gun battle with another family, the police said, saying the cause may have been tribal rivalry.
Also yesterday, officials in southern city of Basra said that a bullet-riddled body of Sabri al-Asadi, a municipal official missing for two days, was found.
Asadi criticized political groups thought to have been stirring up antigovernment protests over power shortages in Basra last week. The demonstrations turned violent and claimed two lives.
Related: Occupation Iraq: All in the Family
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
While violence has dropped overall across the country, the attacks underlined the continued threat to government employees and members of the security forces, who are often targeted by insurgents trying to destabilize the country.
Oh, is that who is doing it?
Related: Occupation Iraq: Up and Down "Al-CIA-Duh"
"As politicians bicker, burst of attacks kills 50 in Baghdad; Shi’ite pilgrims among targets in political vacuum" by Barbara Surk, Associated Press | July 8, 2010
A soldier guarded near the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim in Baghdad where a suicide bombing yesterday killed 32 pilgrims. (Saad Shalash /Reuters)
I posted the photograph because of those beautiful people in the background.
BAGHDAD — Militants struck across the Iraqi capital yesterday, killing 50 people, including 32 in a suicide bombing that targeted pilgrims commemorating a revered Shi’ite saint, Iraqi police said.
I'm sorry, but that simply WAS NOT HAPPENING before WE GOT THERE!
I know it wasn't happening in Iraq because Saddam banned stuff like this; however, it wasn't and doesn't happen across the Muslim world -- until USrael gets a footprint in-country!
The attacks — the deadliest of which occurred in northern Baghdad’s predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah — indicated a push by insurgents to exploit Iraq’s political vacuum and destabilize the country as US troops start heading home.
Related: Occupation Iraq: Occupation Forever
Police said the suicide bombing that killed 32 and wounded more than 90 people split the hot evening air as pilgrims were about to cross a bridge leading to a shrine in the Shi’ite Kazimiyah neighborhood, where Moussa al-Kadhim, the seventh imam, is buried.
Militants were able to strike even as security forces were on high alert in the capital, where Shi’ite pilgrims from all over Iraq converged on a mosque in the northern Baghdad neighborhood to mark the anniversary of the death of Kadhim.
Can you say INSIDE JOB, readers! I knew you could.
A vehicle ban was in place across Kazimiyah, and 200,000 members of security forces were deployed along the way to the shrine, searching pilgrims for weapons at various checkpoints....
And yet SOMEHOW they GOT THROUGH!
The suicide bombing was the most deadly of several attacks yesterday:
■At least seven pilgrims were killed in two separate attacks in the Harthiya neighborhood in western Baghdad. Twenty-nine people were wounded in the two attacks, police and hospital officials said.
■In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting devout Shi’ites killed two civilians and two policemen on patrol near by, police officials said.
■Two pilgrims died and seven were wounded in eastern Baghdad when a mortar shell hit their procession.
■ In western Baghdad, militants blew up the homes of two police officers, two members of the Awakening Council, which opposed Al Qaeda, and an ambulance driver in dawn attacks in Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib. None of the targeted men were at home at the time of the attacks, but three of the men’s relatives were killed, police and hospital officials said.
■Also in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi soldier was killed and six were wounded when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into an Army checkpoint. A bomb attached to a car of a police officer exploded in the same western Baghdad suburb, killing his mother and wounding his wife, police officials said.
■In the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, a police major was killed when a bomb attached to his car detonated as he drove to work, police said.
Well, we know whose calling card that is.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
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Yeah, Iraq is doing just great, huh?
BAGHDAD — Bomb blasts across the capital killed at least seven people yesterday, the last day of a Shi’ite religious pilgrimage. In addition, four pilgrims walking back from the ceremony were sprayed with gunfire outside the northern city of Kirkuk. One died; three were injured.
The bloody morning follows a series of blasts Wednesday that killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 250 in the city and surrounding areas. The most deadly was a suicide bombing in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah that killed more than 28 and wounded at least 136 people. Casualties in the attacks rose overnight, police said.
No one has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks.
More than 4 million people had gathered yesterday in the city to commemorate the death of the revered Shi’ite figure Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. Pilgrims had walked from across the country to reach the Shi’ite shrine, despite attacks in the previous days.
Also yesterday, four people were killed and five were injured in bomb attacks on officers’ homes in western Ramad, and a farmer was killed in a bomb attack in Kirkuk, police said.
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Just ADD THEM to the MILLIONS that have been killed in this illegal and immoral occupation!
