[From the diaries by susanhu.]
newly named leader of Al Qaeda – the Syriar Al Zarqawi :
“He who has warned is excused.”
AL-QAEDA CLAIM FOR BOMBINGS TODAY ::
Day of Vengeance
– Number killed upped to 180 persons
– 11x suicide bombings, targeting:
– 7x coalition forces
– 2x Iraqi police
– 1x civilian, at market 108 died
– 1x near hospital where wounded were taken
– in 50% of attacks, it was a Shia neighborhood
– a number of shootings combined with bomb attacks.
From Jan. 1, 2005 over 6,000 civilians have died in Iraq. The Baghdad metropolitan area has a population of 6 million, half of Iraqi people are < 20 years old. Unemployment rate is estimated at 50%.
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In Northern Baghdad, or North of Baghdad, 17 men were dragged from their homes and executed by unknown gunmen, some dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms.
More ugly violence as more than 40 were killed when a suicide car bomb exploded in central Baghdad as men were waiting for a day’s employment.
More to follow below the fold »»
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Another Bomb in Central Baghdad – Live Video on CNNi sees black smoke billowing to the sky – more to follow!
Bombs, Gunmen Kill over 114 in Baghdad
A man clutches the bloodied clothes and shoes of a relative who was killed by a suicide car bombing in a residential part of Baghdad today. Witnesses said the bomber was targeting the nearby offices of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. REUTERS/Kareem Raheem
Explosions amd Attacks in Central Iraq Kill at Least 169 and Wounding 542
BAGHDAD, Iraq – More than a dozen explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital in rapid succession, killing at least 152 people and wounding 542 in a series of attacks that began with a suicide car bombing that targeted laborers assembled to find work for the day. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility.
The one-day death toll was believed to be the worst in the capital since major combat ended in May 2003, and Al-Jazeera said Al-Qaida in Iraq linked the attacks to the recent killing of about 200 militants from the city of Tal Afar by U.S. and Iraqi forces.
Today’s worst bombing killed at least 104 people and wounded 227 in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah where the day laborers had gathered shortly after dawn.
The carnage was the worst single day of bloodshed since March 2, 2004, when coordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives hit Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad, killing at least 181 and wounding 573.
Recently on bridge over Euphrates river of Baghdad, a 1000 Shia pilgrims died after fear caused a stampede and people were trampled or pushed off bridge into river.
Wounded Iraqis are treated in hospital following a suicide car bomb attack in Baghdad. The blast killed mostly labourers who had gathered to look for work in the Shi'ite district of Kathimiya. Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Deadly violence rocked central Iraq early today, killing at least 104 people and wounding 186 others, police said.
At least one suicide car bomb exploded near a gathering of laborers in Kadhimiya — a Shiite area of north-central Baghdad. A driver of a small van capable of carrying personnel, called out to a group of Iraqis waiting to be employed, that he was looking for workers. The terrorist – suicide bomber – blew himself up with the van filled with explosives …
Hospital officials told police that at least 80 people have been killed, and another 162 wounded. The bombing took place around 6:50 a.m. (10:50 p.m. ET Tuesday).
About three hours later, another suicide car bomb targeted shoppers in the busy Shiite neighborhood of Shu’la in northwestern Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 22 others.
In Taji, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Baghdad, men wearing Iraqi army uniforms stormed homes and pulled 17 Shiite men from their homes, shooting them execution style, police said.
The men were killed around 4 a.m. Taji is a mixed Sunni-Shiite community.
Attacks were also staged on at least three military convoys.
A suicide car bomb targeted an Iraqi army convoy in the al-Adil intersection in western Baghdad around 9:40 a.m. (1:40 a.m. EDT). According to police, three Iraqi soldiers were killed and two of their vehicles were damaged.
About 40 minutes earlier, another suicide car bomber hit a U.S. military convoy in eastern Baghdad, wounding two soldiers and destroying their Humvee.
for U.S. | Iraqi attacks on Tal Afar?
US and Iraqi soldiers patrol Tal Afar, and carried out a house-to-house search for insurgents in the northern town after rebels melted away in the face of a large-scale operation. AFP/Ali Khalil
The Islamic Army in Iraq, which has previously claimed responsibility for kidnappings and killings of foreigners, made a bounty offer for the assassination of key Iraqi officials.
The group called in a website posting for its “holy fighters to strike the infidels with an iron fist.” It offered $100,000 to the killer of al-Jaafari, $50,000 for the interior minister and $30,000 for the defence minister.
on the Rafidha (a pejorative term for Shiites), wherever they are in Iraq.”
Zarqawi, who has a 25 million dollar US price on his head, also urged Sunni Arabs to “wake up from your slumber… the war to exterminate Sunnis will never end.”
Iraqi leaders were challenged to leave Baghdad’s highly fortified “Green Zone” to challenge his mujahedeen, or holy warriors.
The voice on the tape demanded that Iraq’s other religious groups and its tribes disavow the government of Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari or face attack.
Jaafari himself, speaking on Iraqi state television from New York, where he was attending a UN summit, said a Palestinian and a Libyan had been detained over the attacks.
He was determined “to pursue the war against terrorism and remove it from all corners of the country”.
▼ ▼ ▼ RELATED ARTICLES ON IRAQ
Here’s the Guardian’s article on today’s events:
Recall that the referendum on the draft constitution is coming on 15 October – many Sunnis feel disenfranchised.
have you noticed a pattern here? when their not in the major headlines, and something else steals their fire, then BOOM….
Oh this disease that has plagued the world….GREED
And George is spewing his war on terra as we speak. “Advance of Freedom and Security is our mission and should be the mission of the UN.UN must stand for Integrity and be free from corruption.”How dare he call the kettle black? Once again as people lose their lives he’s asleep at the wheel. He most likely doesn’t even know of these new lives lost.
Did anyone see Vonnegut on The Daily Show last night?
“I want to say something good about the president:
He is not the dumbest person in our government. Donald Rumsfeld is the dumbest person in our government.”
Next comes the coordinated and Iran-backed attacks on the Green Zone itself.
I like Patrick Lang’s take: Generalissimo Rumsfeld. And now the Generalissimo wants to have the option of Pre-emptive Nuclear Strikes!!!! Let’s hope the whole damn Bush empire thing comes down on their heads before they start a true global war. There are so many situations and crises brought on by Bush’s toxic administration that it’s hard to keep track of the death and destruction.
Thanks for this outstanding diary, Oui. That one photo of the grieving Iraqi just rips my heart out.
I think the plan must be to have so many Iraqi’s killed that there are virtually none left or those left are so shell-shocked by what has happened to their country or what is left of it that they don’t care when we declare it the 51st state.
Every day I read the Iraqwarnews and become ill..all in the sanctuary of my safe little apartment..I can’t even begin to imagine what the Iraqi people must be feeling now going into the 3rd year of this criminal invasion of their country and the destruction of lives/families and also the destruction of whole towns …my anger and revulsion must only be the minisculest(is that a word?) of feelings in comparison of what the Iraqi people must be feeling.
Terrorists unite to plot Iraqi civil war
According to US military intelligence sources, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man responsible for the bloodiest acts of terror in Iraq over the past two years, now commands thousands of fighters from various rival groups and is set to order further waves of bombings.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush is extremely photos involved at the UN:
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Thanks for the great links and the laughs.
Most powerful and awful …
The world’s mightiest person escapes by going potty!
US-UK wil never again meet International Law.
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The clinic where my wife worked as an internist, has been shut down. All of my daughters are doctors and have escaped the last year.
The streets are unsafe, you are a prisoner in your own house, in your own neighborhood. You leave your home only when it’s absolutely necessary. The last few weeks I have moved most of my precious items out, shipped them to Jordan.
This is my country, my body leaves, but my heart will be forever here, where I was born and lived all my life.
I have lived through the perils of the Iran war and the campaign of the Kuwait invasion, and the U.S. Gulf War. Many years of U.N. sanctions caused great suffering, but what I see today in Baghdad is WORST. Civilians feel unsafe and cannot live their lives. Many are targeted from different sides, so I must now leave my country.
I don’t think I will come back. It will take ten years to reach any improvement so the Iraqis can feel safe, secure and have a decent administration in the city and the country.
Millions of Iraqis have left Iraq and have chosen their new home in Jordan, Syria or Egypt.
SPREADING FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY!
An interview and report by CNNi today.
Baghdad Sept. 11, 2005 — It has been four years today. How does it feel four years later?
For the 3,000 victims in America, more than 100,000 have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands of others are being detained for interrogation and torture. Our homes have been raided, our cities are constantly being bombed and Iraq has fallen back decades, and for several years to come we will suffer under the influence of the extremism we didn’t know prior to the war.
Iraqi women and girls stands in line at an Iraqi Red Crescent camp for people displaced by fighting in Tal Afar, Iraq, 420 kilometers (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad. There are now four thousand people living in the camp, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. AP Photo/Jacob SilberbergAs I write this, Tel Afar, a small place north of Mosul, is being bombed. Dozens of people are going to be buried under their homes in the dead of the night. Their water and electricity have been cut off for days. It doesn’t seem to matter much though because they don’t live in a wonderful skyscraper in a glamorous city. They are, quite simply, farmers and herders not worth a second thought.
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Since the acrimonious exchange of words in July 2003 following the arrest and imprisonment of 11 Turkish commandos in Kurdish Iraq, for which Washington expressed “regret”; differences erupted publicly this week between NATO allies Turkey and the US over attacks on Turkey’s ethnic cousins, the Turkmens in northern Iraq.
Talking to a Turkish TV channel, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned that if the US did not cease its attacks on Tal Afar, a Turkmen city at the junction of Turkey, Iraq and Syria, Ankara might withdraw its support to the US in Iraq.
Turkey is a key US ally in a largely hostile region. US forces use its Incirlik military base near northern Iraq. Turkish firms are also involved heavily in the construction and transport business in Iraq, with hundreds of Turkish vehicles bringing in goods for the US military every day.
Despite negative signals on Ankara’s mission to join the European Union, Turkey is moving away from the US and closer to the EU – it is even looking to buy Airbuses, and arms, from Europe rather than the US.
At the same time, Turkey is drawing closer to Syria, normalizing relations with Iran and improving economic relations with Russia, as well as discuss with Moscow ways to counter terrorist acts, from which both Russia and Turkey suffer. Russian President Vladimir Putin called off a visit to Turkey when the hostage crisis broke at Beslan in the Russian Caucasus last week.
And Turkey has also moved away from long-time friend Israel, the US’s umbilically aligned strategic partner in the Middle East. Turkey has accused Israel of “state terrorism” against Palestinians. A recent ruling party team from Turkey returned from Tel Aviv not satisfied with Israeli explanations over charges that it was interfering in northern Iraqi affairs.
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~ Cross-posted from diary Say it isn’t so… Please. ~
We witness the rise of new global players and prospective world powers: an European Union, China and Russia.
Just one player is losing out on influence and economic power in the world: the United States.
Way to go Bush regime – losing friends and gaining enemies – it’s time for change!
Does Al-Ghadri know how to spell C H A L A B I – and policy of deceit & lies?
EU & Partnership with Syria
Turkey and Syria choose friendship
Unifying Factor – Kurdistan
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~ Cross-posted from diary And the rocket’s red glare…. ~
“Baghdad – US-led forces have bombed eight bridges on the Euphrates River in western Iraq to stop insurgents using them, US military spokesperson Major General Rick Lynch said Thursday.”
Now we are blowing up bridges. For the first time I believe we have lost. For the first time as a military professional I think we have no way of winning this. We are willing to destroy the basic structures of the country to deny the enemy their use.
Army Times by Antonio Castaneda (AP)
HAQLANIYAH, Iraq Oct. 4 — The U.S. military launched a major offensive in a cluster of cities in the Euphrates River valley, an operation aimed at insurgents using the area as a safe haven in a region where 20 Marines were killed in August.
Air strikes by U.S. warplanes and dozens of helicopters set off explosions that lit the city skylines of Haqlaniyah, Parwana and Haditha before dawn. Bridges across the Euphrates River between Haqlanaiyah and Haditha were bombed to prevent insurgents from using them.
About 2,500 U.S. Marines, soldiers and sailors, and hundreds of Iraqi troops, took part in the operation, codenamed River Gate, the largest U.S. offensive in Anbar this year, the military said. More Iraqi soldiers appeared to be participating in the operation than any other offensive conducted in the region.
“The operation’s goal is to deny Al-Qaida in Iraq the ability to operate in the three Euphrates River valley cities and to free local citizens from the insurgents’ campaign of murder and intimidation of innocent women, children and men,” the U.S. military said in a statement.
It was the second U.S. offensive launched against al-Qaida in Iraq militants in the western Anbar region in the past four days.
Last Saturday, about 1,000 service members launched a separate U.S. offensive, Operation Iron Fist, farther to the west in the Euphrates River valley near the Syrian border in the village of Sadah and two nearby towns, Rumana and Karabila.
Six Marines Killed in Iraq Bomb Attacks
An Iraqi woman grieves next to the body of her 6 year old daughter killed by a car bomb in Samarra, Iraq yesterday. Three other people from the same family were wounded in the explosion. AP Photo/Hameed RasheedU.S. and Coalition Rhetoric Has Been Adjusted
The U.S. rhetoric has been adjusted: we’re fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, just check all the reports, speeches, press releases and MSM journalism and TV coverage. Iraq transformed by Bush neocons into a hotbed of terrorists within 2½ years and growing.
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~ Earlier posted in The Civil War in Iraq ◊ by BooMan ~
Analyse the purpose, goals and targets of the suicide attack and you will understand there is a grand design behind them. First of all, it requires a vast organization, coordination and logistics to have multiple attacks take place within hours, and some have been announced one or two days ahead of time.
The Baathists, Sunnis and minor foreign Arab influence are part of this. It’s Saddam Husseins extended secret service who are involved, the U.S. hard-handed approach in central Iraq has created the opportunity for Iraqi factions to unite. A motivation for resistance is the presence of U.S. and British troops on Arab soil. The Iraqi population accepted in the early months the necessity of coalition troops to remove Saddam regime, a longer stay works counterproductive.
The US failed miserably to establish order and security in Baghdad and all of Iraq. The services for water, hygiene and electricity are lacking, worse than it ever was under Saddam Hussein and the UN embargo. Even the availability of fuel at the service station is poor. The unemployment level is high – 50% – offering recruits to the Iraqi resistance and “freedom fighters”.
The strategy has evolved as follows :: the targets
Terror attacks follow an established plan, designed before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The weapons and munitions caches are in place and are very numerous and extensive throughout the country. The Kurds increases tension by evicting Arabs from cities like Mosul and Kirkuk. The borders are open, have been for ages, and there is no way the Iraqis or MNF can shut down border infiltration without full backing of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Syria. The Kurds are creating problems in the southern portion of Turkey by invading, bombing and attacking the Turkish armed forces.
United States needs to GET OUT, sooner rather than later.
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