Firemen evacuate the body of a victim from the scene of a car bomb attack in Baghdad, April 15, 2007. (Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud/Reuters)
Baghdad
Two car bombs exploded minutes apart in a busy Baghdad market in a mainly Shiite district Sunday, killing at least 18 people, police said. Reuters adds that mortar rounds also fell in the area as part of an apparently coordinated attack.
Also Sunday, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a minibus in northwest Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding 11, police and hospital officials said. The blast occurred shortly after noon near a courthouse in the al-Utafiyah neighborhood. Many of the victims were severely burned, an official at the Khazimiyah Hospital said.
A parked minibus exploded in the Karradah neighbourhood of central Baghdad today, killing nine civilians and wounding 12 others, police and hospital officials said. The blast damaged several cars and nearby shops, witnesses said
The Iraqi army killed four insurgents and wounded 17 others during the last 24 hours in different parts of Iraq, the Defence Ministry said.
The Islamic State of Iraq armed group said in a statement posted on the Internet on Saturday that it has kidnapped 20 Iraqi soldiers and policemen and threatens to kill them in 48 hours if its demands are not met, to hand over police accused of raping an Iraqi woman. The statement said the security staff were abducted in eastern Baghdad, but didn't mention at what time. Images could be seen on the Internet with the purported captives dressed in brown and blue uniforms, blindfolded and handcuffed. No confirmation from the Iraq government that such a kidnapping has in fact occurred.
Taji
It is with deep sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the deaths of two British Personnel in Iraq when two UK Puma Helicopters crashed north of Baghdad in Iraq on Sunday 15 April 2007. "Sadly, two personnel have died and one is very seriously injured. Three others have suffered more minor injuries. All were UK personnel. My thoughts and sympathy are with them and their families. "Initial reports indicate that the crash was an accident and not as a result of an attack by insurgents. An investigation is underway and I will not comment further on the details of the incident at this stage." Note: There was some initial confusion about the nationality of the helicopters, but this is definitive. It is news that British helicopters were operating in that area, which of course is not in the UK occupation zone. The Ministry refuses to say what their mission was. -- C
Dhi Qar
Four Romanian troops were injured in the southern Iraqi province of Dhi Qar on Saturday when the armored vehicle in which they were traveling rolled over. Note: It turns out there are 650 Romanian soldiers in the mostly peaceful south.
Basra
British troops providing backup for an Iraqi police raid in Basra's Hayaniya district overnight shot five gunmen who opened fire on them, the British military said, adding that it could not confirm whether the five had been killed or wounded. The U.S. military said in a statement earlier the gunmen had been killed, but tells a slightly different version of this story: Iraqi and Coalition Forces killed five terrorists and detained two suspected terrorists during an operation early Saturday morning in Basrah targeting rogue Jaysh al Mahdi elements. During the raid, Iraqi and Coalition Forces began receiving enemy small arms fire. Ground forces returned fire killing five terrorists. Ground forces also discovered three men running electric wire used to detonate improvised explosive devices across a road. The three men fled as ground forces approached.
Baiji
Gunmen killed a police colonel and a policeman and wounded a police colonel and Major General in a drive-by shooting in the oil city refinery of Baiji, north of Baghdad, police said.
Mosul
Two suicide bombers detonated trucks packed with explosives aimed at an Iraqi army base in the western Al-Taniq district, killing four people and wounding 16, said police Major Mohammed Ahmed. Two soldiers were killed and four soldiers were wounded, said Ahmed.
From the same report, yet another car bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol in western Mosul, wounding four people, the police officer added.
Al Anbar Prv
Mohammed Ismail, a local al-Qaeda leader, was found shot dead in the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad on Saturday, police Lieutent Colonel Ahmed Hamid said.
Khalidiya
Two bodies were found in Khalidiya, 83 km (50 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. They had been shot and showed signs of torture.
Fallujah
Eleven people were kidnapped at a fake checkpoint in the village of al-Zidan, 5 km southeast of Falluja city, an Iraqi police source said on Sunday. "The fake checkpoint was set up by unidentified gunmen on the highway near Zidan village and were led at gunpoint to an unknown place," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
Khanqin (Diyala province)
An Iraqi National Guard patrol found the bodies of six fuel tanker drivers, five of them Iranians and the sixth an Iraqi, an Iraqi police source said on Sunday. "The drivers had been kidnapped on Saturday by unidentified gunmen at a fake checkpoint in the city of Khanqin, (165 km) northeast of Baghdad," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
Missan (Amara)
A former member of the dissolved Baath Party was killed in an explosive device attack in central al-Amara, an eyewitness said on Sunday. "Jassem Mohammed Firaawn was killed while trying to keep away from an explosive charge planted by unidentified gunmen in the neighborhood of al-Qahira in central Amara," an eyewitness told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Firaawn was headmaster of the al-Risala secondary school for boys until he was relieved because of his active membership in the former regime's Baath Party.
Karbala
Updated casualty toll from yesterday's market bombing is 47 dead and 224 wounded.
Undisclosed location, southern Iraq
"U.S. service member," otherwise unidentified, killed in previously unannounced bombing on Friday, one wounded. Oddly, "The statement was e-mailed to reporters in Kuwait on Friday, but the death had yet to be announced by U.S. officials in Baghdad."
Other News of the Day
A group of popular leaders in Basra calls for demonstrations demanding removal of the governor. Sadrist movement denies any link to the call. Fadilah Party claims there is a plot to assassinate the governor, who has asked for Iraqi army reinforcements.
Karbala Governor says there was advance intelligence of the Saturday market attack, calls government security forces' response inadequate. Demonstrations in Karbala against the local government turn violent.
Baghdad residents fear recent bridge bombings are part of a scheme to divide the city, according to Reuters reporters Ibon Villelabeitia and Mussab Al-Khairalla. Excerpt:
When insurgents blew up the Sarafiya Bridge in Baghdad, a piece of Yaseen Kathim's past was sent forever crashing into the muddy waters of the Tigris River. "When I heard it was destroyed, I felt I was hit. It was my bridge. I used it everyday," said Kathim, a 37-year-old doctor, lamenting the destruction last Thursday of the steel span.
But the bombing of one of Baghdad's most enduring symbols was not only an attack on the city's infrastructure. Some residents and officials fear it could be part of a more sinister plot by insurgents to split Baghdad, with a Shi'ite east bank and a Sunni west bank.
On Saturday, a suicide car bomber blew himself up at a ramp leading to the Jadriyah bridge, causing no structural damage. It is unclear if the two attacks were related, but the U.S. military said insurgents appear to be changing tactics.
"The constant strategy of the terrorists is to look at ways to divide and create terror and make life difficult for the people of Iraq," Rear Admiral Mark Fox, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq told reporters on Sunday, adding military planners were "studying carefully" the two incidents.
"The terrorists are planning to split Karkh from Rusafa," said a senior Shi'ite lawmaker, using Baghdad's ancient names for the west bank (Karkh) and the east bank (Rusafa). "This has been the plan by terrorists and their political allies all along to try and drive Shi'ites out of Karkh so they can split Baghdad in half."
On the other side of the sectarian divide, parliament speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani, an outspoken Sunni politician, called the destruction of Sarafiya a "conspiracy to isolate the two halves of Baghdad".
UN Conference on Iraqi refugee crisis slated for this week. "The U.N. refugee agency says this is not a pledging conference. Spokesman Ron Redmond calls the agency's $60 million appeal for humanitarian operations a drop in the ocean. He says it will take billions and billions of dollars to make Iraq whole again."
In-Depth Reporting, Commentary and Analysis
WaPo's Steve Fainaru tells the story of a mercenary accused of the casual murder of Iraqis. But, there are no consequences beyond unemployment, as U.S. mercenaries in Iraq are beyond the reach of any law. Excerpt:
On the afternoon of July 8, 2006, four private security guards rolled out of Baghdad's Green Zone in an armored SUV. The team leader, Jacob C. Washbourne, rode in the front passenger seat. He seemed in a good mood. His vacation started the next day.
"I want to kill somebody today," Washbourne said, according to the three other men in the vehicle, who later recalled it as an offhand remark. Before the day was over, however, the guards had been involved in three shooting incidents. In one, Washbourne allegedly fired into the windshield of a taxi for amusement, according to interviews and statements from the three other guards.
Washbourne, a 29-year-old former Marine, denied the allegations. "They're all unfounded, unbased, and they simply did not happen," he said during an interview near his home in Broken Arrow, Okla.
snip
Private contractors were granted immunity from the Iraqi legal process in 2004 by L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation government. More recently, the military and Congress have moved to establish guidelines for prosecuting contractors under U.S. law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but so far the issue remains unresolved.
The only known inquiry into the July 8 incidents was conducted by Triple Canopy, a 3 1/2 -year-old company founded by retired Special Forces officers and based in Herndon. Triple Canopy employed the four guards. After the one-week probe, the company concluded that three questionable shooting incidents had occurred that day and fired Washbourne and two other employees, Shane B. Schmidt and Charles L. Sheppard III.
Sarcasm department, from Iraqi blogger Laith:
It looks I will never finish writing about the achievements of our great government. Excuse me dear readers but I think I have the right to feel proud that we have such great government supported by the great administration of Great Bush. Well, let me go directly to the point. I just would like to tell you that this is the 7th day that we don’t have water in our neighborhood. Yes, we don’t have water and we have to use the water pumps to get water and if any house could get it by the pump, the other houses would never be able to have because it looks that Baghdad municipality cants pump enough quantity of water to fill the pipes. I think because the municipality is really busy with other projects which are more important than providing water like painting the pavement. Hey did I tell you that we are the country number 1 in painting the pavements. Baghdad municipality paints the pavements almost every season. I don’t know why and I think only Allah knows why but I know that the contractors who do this job earns millions of dollars in this work although it is worthless. Anyway, back to water shortage. My family is one of the lucky families who earn enough to use our electric generator any time we want and seriously I thank Allah for that gift. The first machine work in the house when I turn on the generator is the water pump. Yesterday, almost all our neighbors came to our house asking for water. We kept our water pump working for hours and we couldn’t do anything but providing people with water until 11 pm. I could see happiness and Thanks Allah, my family gained many nice prayers from our neighbors who were really thankful.
I don’t know what to say but I just want to know what the word government means. Does it only mean to have hundreds of guards and to steal money or it means to travel here and there claiming that you work hard for your people or it means to send the young men to die in an aimless war?
Quote of the Day
The most revealing new information on Iraq -- guaranteed to make readers sad or angry, or both -- is found not in any press dispatch but in a collection of several hundred PDFs posted on the Web this week.
Here you will find, for example, that when the U.S. drops a bomb that goes awry, lands in an orchard, and does not detonate -- until after a couple of kids go out to take a look -- our military does not feel any moral or legal reason to compensate the family of the dead child because this is, after all, broadly speaking, a "combat situation." What price (when we do pay) do we place on the life of a 9-year-old boy, shot by one of our soldiers who mistook his book bag for a bomb satchel? Would you believe $500? And when we shoot an Iraqi journalist on a bridge we shell out $2500 to his widow -- but why not the measly $5000 she had requested?
This, and much more, is found in the new PDFs of Iraqi claims, which are usually denied.
Greg Mitchell And, the ACLU has posted a searchable database of these documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, at this location.
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