 Sunni insurgents hit two Shiite towns in two days with brutal bombings that killed more than 110 people, apparently aiming to scare Shiites away from a crucial vote on Iraq's new constitution. In the latest attack, a car bomb ripped through a fruit and vegetable market crowded with Friday morning shoppers.
| But don't go hunting them down and killing them with the same wild abandon. It might piss 'em off and they'll do something violent. |
Destroyed stalls lay in pools of blood in the al-Sharia market in the southern city of Hillah, in Iraq's Shiite heartland. The scenes mirrored the devastation in Balad, the Shiite town in the middle of a Sunni region north of Baghdad hit by a triple suicide bombing Thursday, a far more lethal attack. Unidentified bodies in bags or under pieces of cardboard lay on the ground in a Balad hospital courtyard Friday. Weeping women went from body to body searching for loved ones. The blasts reduced nearly an entire block in the market district to a giant mound of twisted metal and bricks strewn with bananas, tomatoes and other produce. "Why does such a thing happen to us? We ask the government and Arab countries to help us," cried Mohammed Mahdi Jassim, a Balad resident.
| Trying to accomodate them isn't working, huh? Until the citizenry — not just the cops and the military — starts shooting back this will go on. |
Both attacks seemed staged to kill or maim as many civilians as possible, tearing through busy markets and commercial streets. At least 10 people were killed in Hillah and 102 in Balad. At least 22 of those killed both days were women and children. Insurgents have vowed to derail the Oct. 15 referendum, opposed by Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, and the recent surge of violence has killed at least 200 people — including 13 U.S. service members — in the past five days. The Sunni-led al-Qaida in Iraq, the most feared insurgent group, has declared "all-out war" on Shiites, and since a Shiite-majority government took power April 28, suicide bombers have killed at least 1,345 people, according to an Associated Press count. |