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| Iraq |
| Iraq Attacks Kill 46 as Official Escapes Assassination |
| 2013-09-16 |
| [An Nahar] Attacks across Iraq, including more than a dozen boom-mobiles, killed at least 46 people on Sunday while the head of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... 's provincial council escaped an liquidation attempt on his convoy. The violence was the latest in months of unrelenting bloodshed, the country's worst since 2008, that has sparked concern Iraq is slipping back into the all-out sectarian war of previous years that killed tens of thousands. Authorities have imposed tough restrictions on movement in the capital and elsewhere, and carried out wide-ranging operations against Death Eaters, but Death Eaters have pressed their attacks. On Sunday, they struck in more than a dozen towns and cities, with at least 17 boom-mobiles, killing 46 people and wounding more than 130 overall. The deadliest violence was in and around the city of Hilla, the predominantly Shiite capital of Babil province south of Storied Baghdad, where four boom-mobiles killed 19 people, police and medics said. "I saw many people with burns, and people who were on fire, they were screaming for help," said Sajjad al-Amari, a 22-year-old witness to one boom-mobileing on the outskirts of Hilla. Another witness, Karrar Ahmed, told Agence La Belle France Presse he saw "many shop owners who were thrown to the floor, many were killed and maimed, and they were lying on the ground, among the goods from their shops." Ahmed, still shaking with nerves, said incompetence by the security forces had "cleared the way for gunnies to target, and kill, civilians." No group immediately grabbed credit for the violence, which largely struck majority Shiite areas. Sunni snuffies linked to al-Qaeda, however, often target Iraq's Shiite majority, whose adherents they regard as apostates. In Storied Baghdad, meanwhile, a boom-mobile hit the convoy of Riyadh al-Adhadh, chief of the provincial council and a Sunni politician from the party of the national parliament speaker. Adhadh was unharmed but two others, including one of his bodyguards, were killed and four people were maimed. The blast shattered the windows of nearby shops and buildings, and security forces imposed a cordon around the area in the aftermath, an AFP journalist at the scene said. A separate boom-mobile later on Sunday in the capital killed three others. Another boom-mobileing at a market on the outskirts of the southern port city of Basra killed three people and maimed 15 others, officials said. Attacks south of Storied Baghdad -- in Yusifiyah, Karbala, Nasiriyah, Kut, Suweirah and Hafriyah -- left nine people dead, while shootings and bombings in and around the northern and western cities of Abu Ghraib, Baquba, Sharqat, Kirkuk and djinn-infested Mosul killed 10 more. The latest bloodshed comes amid a months-long increase in violence which has left more than 4,000 dead already this year, as Iraq grapples with a prolonged political deadlock and spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria. On Saturday, a jacket wallah at a funeral near djinn-infested Mosul, Iraq's main northern city, killed 27 people and maimed dozens, and violence in the past week alone has claimed more than 200 lives. Authorities insist a campaign targeting snuffies is yielding results, claiming to have captured hundreds of alleged fighters and killed dozens, with security forces apparently having dismantled several krazed killer training camps and bomb-making sites. But the government has faced criticism for not doing more to defuse Sunni Arab anger over alleged ill-treatment at the hands of the Shiite-led authorities. Analysts and diplomats say snuffies have exploited this on the ground to recruit new fighters and carry out attacks. Last week, an al-Qaeda front group grabbed credit for a spate of boom-mobiles that targeted Shiite neighborhoods of Storied Baghdad and left 50 dead. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 How's those SOFA demands working out for you? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2013-09-16 09:12 |