Security Incidents for 04/19/07

Photo: An Iraqi mourns over the coffin of his brother after taking him from the morgue of a hospital in Baghdad's impoverished district of Sadr City. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates held talks with top US commanders after he flew into Iraq on Thursday, a day after bombers killed more than 200 people in a savage blow to an American security plan. [WRONG! It was a blow to the Iraqi people! I think this picture represents how most Iraqis now feel about the horrible situation they find themselves in. - dancewater] (AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)

Baghdad:

But violence did not abate Thursday, as a suicide bomber exploded in another mostly Shiite district, killing at least 11 people and wounding 28, police said. The car bomb exploded next to a fuel tanker in Karradah, setting fire to the truck. The death toll was expected to rise.

In southern Baghdad's Jadiriya district, at least 13 were killed and 25 others wounded when vehicle bomb went off, witnesses said.

Police said a bomber rammed his car into a fuel tanker in the religiously-mixed neighborhood of Jadriya on Thursday

In another incident, at least three Iraqis were killed and one wounded Thursday in a mortar shell attack in southern Baghdad, according to the Iraqi police. A residential area in the Sa'farana district in western Baghdad was bombarded with mortar shells killing at least three Iraqis, including one woman, and injuring a child, the source added.

Iraqi army killed 20 insurgents and arrested 84 others during the last 24 hours in operations across Iraq, police said.

An MND-B Soldier died when a combat security patrol was attacked with small arms fire in a southwestern section of Baghdad April 18.

Two MND-B Soldiers died and one other was wounded when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device north of Baghdad April 18.

A mortar round landed on a house, killing one person and wounding three in the northwestern district of Kadhimiya, the interior ministry said.

A sniper injured a woman in the Shi'ite neighbourhood of Sadriya, a day after a truck bombing killed 140 people, a Reuters witness said

Around 11 am, 2 policemen were injured by gunmen in Waziriya neighborhood.

Around 12 pm, mortar shelling targeted Al-Ilam neighborhood without casualties.

Around 1 pm, a roadside bomb exploded in Baldiyat neighborhood without casualties.

Around 1:30 pm, a suicide car bomber targeted Al Jadiriya neighborhood killing 6 civilians, 31 injured and some burned cars with some damage to the nearby buildings

Around 3 pm, 3 civilians were killed and 2 injured in random shootings by gunmen near Al Sadoon street in the middle of the downtown.

Around 3 pm, 2 policemen were killed and 1 injured when gunmen fired on their vehicle in Al Waziriya neighborhood.

Around 4 pm, a roadside bomb exploded in Adil neighborhood injuring 2 civilians.

20 corpses were found in Baghdad today. 17 were in the west(Kharkh): 4 in Dora, 3 in Bayaa, 2 in Amiriya, 2 in Mahmudiya, 2 in Jihad, 2 in Amil, 1 in Mansour, 1 in Hurriya. 3 were found in east(Rusafa): 1 in Adhamiya, 1 in Ma'amil, 1 in Sadr City.

Diyala Prv:

Scattered violence continued on Thursday. A policeman and a civilian woman were killed when gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said. Five more policemen were wounded in the shooting.

Iraqi security forces on Thursday killed two gunmen and arrested another one during clashes in Diala province, 57 km northeast of Baghdad, a police source said.

Kut:

An Iraqi soldier was gunned down near Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, according to officials at a nearby hospital where his body was brought.

Diwaniya:

A mortar round landed on a house, wounding three people in Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

Basra:

It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the deaths of two soldiers from the Queen's Royal Lancers in south-east Iraq at approximately 1120 hours local time on Thursday 19 April 2007. Both were killed by an improvised explosive device in Maysaan Province. The soldiers were on a routine patrol in a Scimitar armoured vehicle when they were hit by the blast. Three further soldiers were injured, one of them very seriously.

Last night (Wednesday), one gunman was injured when the Iraqi army had a clash with an armed group which tried to attack the Basra international airport by indirect fire.

Salah ad Din Prv:

The Iraqi police was informed today that the American army would deliver the Iraqi side a corpse without details.

Dujail:

Separately, unknown gunmen shot dead two people near the local court of Dujail, 60 km north of Baghdad

Dulyiyah:

In Duluiyah, 90 km north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb went off near a U.S. patrol, damaging an armored vehicle, according to a local police source, who spoke anonymously with Xinhua by telephone. It was not clear whether there was any casualty among the U.S. soldiers as the U.S. troops cordoned off the area while helicopters flew overhead, he said.

Shrqat:

Gunmen opened fire on a car travelling on the main road near the Shrqat town, some 250 km north of Baghdad, killing four bodyguards of Ahmed Muhammad Khalaf, deputy Iraqi interior minister, a police source from the U.S. and Iraqi Joint Coordination Center told Xinhua. Two sons of the deputy minister were among the killed bodyguards, one of them named Muthanna who heads the bodyguard team of his father, the source added.

Not far from the scene, the police found another car with two bodies shot with bullets and a third man seriously injured, the source said. The police is investigating whether there was any relation with the first incident, he said

Kirkuk:

In the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, seven employees of the North Oil Company, a state-run enterprise, were seriously wounded in another drive-by shooting, police said. Kirkuk lies 180 miles north of Baghdad.

Mosul:

A total of 11 Iraqi citizens were injured on Thursday when an explosive charge went off near a U.S. vehicle patrol in western Mosul, 402 km north of Baghdad, police sources said. "An explosive charge was detonated this afternoon in Dorat Qassem Khayat region in western Mosul, wounding 11 civilians," an official source in the operations room of the Ninewa police department told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq. No word was available from the U.S. army on the incident, he noted.

Early morning, four policemen guarding the deputy of the Interior minister, including the deputy's son, were killed in Shurqat (south of Mosul) by gunmen and two civilians were killed at the same scene .

Thanks to whisker for ALL the links above.

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Aftermath of a Baghdad Bombing

One day after a bombing killed 135 people in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Sadriya market, correspondent Sam Dagher visited the market. The most striking image, for me, was the old lady. She was wrapped in a black abaya, wandering through the wreckage of charred buses and mangled vehicles. She kept repeating: "This is doomsday. God is greatest." I also saw utter anger and disbelief among the residents and shopkeepers. Government officials I had reached by telephone and heard on state television earlier in the day insisted that the capital's security plan was still on track, despite suffering the biggest breach since it was launched in mid-February. The US and Iraqi forces may have reduced sectarian street fighting. But Al Qaeda is making its presence felt with major bombings. And the Iraqi government's comments only served to highlight the widening disconnect between the government based inside the well-guarded Green Zone and its people in what is commonly referred to by Westerners as the Red Zone. At the open-air food market, I saw Iraqis desperately clutching to shreds of normalcy.

Doctors Warn Of Summer Dehydration Among Children And The Elderly

Doctors are warning of a possible increase in diseases among children and the elderly as Iraq's hot summer months begin. Dehydration, cholera and bacterial infections are of the greatest concern, they say. "The sewage and electrical systems in Iraq have completely deteriorated, worsening the situation, especially for children, as summer begins," said Dr Ibraheem Kaduri, a paediatrician at the Children Teaching Hospital in the capital, Baghdad. Iraqis get less than eight hours of electricity a day and during summer, some cities or districts of the capital get less than six hours. Kaduri said that many people, especially those in displacement camps, have no access to drinking water. Children are forced to drink less water and as the weather gets hotter, they become dehydrated. "But we can't forget that children could also drink dirty water from rivers to quench their thirst, and with the contaminated water, they can be susceptible to diseases like cholera and diarrhoea," he said. "These children have no access to ventilators and air coolers and with temperatures sometimes reaching 48 to 50 degrees Celsius, it could be disastrous for them." Hotter weather will also greatly impact on the health of the elderly, according to Dr Fareed Jaboury, a geriatrician at Medical City Hospital. Many of Iraq's elderly already suffer from dehydration caused by a lack of a balanced diet, he said. The displaced elderly, in particular, show symptoms of skin disorders caused by low water consumption.

Insecurity And Lack Of Funds Prevent Cleansing Of Polluted Sites

There are up to 400 polluted sites in Iraq that are serious health hazards to the population and urgently need to be cleaned, according to a specialist in the Iraqi government. But ongoing violence, particularly the targeting of municipal workers, and a lack of funds is hampering clean-up efforts. "The situation is very serious. These sites have to be cleaned as soon as possible to guarantee that the Iraqi people don't face health hazards because of them," said Fua'ad Abdel-Sattar, an environmental researcher at the Ministry of the Environment, adding that his ministry does not have the money or manpower to undertake the task. As most of these sites contain hazardous chemical materials, including depleted uranium, and are near communities, there is a risk of an outbreak of diseases, he said. Polluted sites are not the only threat to the health of the population. "In addition to hundreds of polluted sites, we also have high pollution in our rivers, lakes and potable water systems. But with electricity shortages in most key areas, it is impossible to pump out dirty water and treat these systems," Abdel-Sattar said. Those involved in identifying and cleansing contaminated areas face the risk of being targeted by armed groups. Abdel-Sattar said that ministry workers lack protection and are frequently threatened and attacked when out in the field.

Iraq’s Education System On the Verge of Collapse

The massacre of Iraqi intellectuals hasn’t stopped since the invasion of 2003. The number of assassinations has not decreased since the BRussells Tribunal started a campaign to save Iraq’s academics, in cooperation with the Spanish based CEOSI (Campaña Estatal contra la Ocupación y por la Soberanía de Iraq). To the contrary. Since the beginning of 2006 more than 100 academics have been assassinated, according to our sources. And as the cases above show: an end of the killings is not in sight. Since the war began in 2003, hundreds of Iraqi academics have been kidnapped and/or murdered - and thousands more have fled for their lives (…). So far more than 470 academics have been killed. Buildings have been burnt and looted in what appears to be a random spree of violence aimed at Iraqi academics. The Iraqi minister of education has said that 296 members of education staff were killed in 2005 alone. According to the UN office for humanitarian affairs 180 teachers have been killed since 2006, up to 100 have been kidnapped and over 3,250 have fled the country . The BRussells Tribunal’s list of murdered Iraqi academics contains 302 names. Anyone who can help us in documenting the killings, the threats and forced emigration of Iraqi academics is welcome to write us: we’re not planning to give up monitoring, certainly not now, at a time when our solidarity is needed most.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

UK Troops Hand Over Province

Iraqi forces took charge of security in a southern province yesterday as part of Britain's plans to scale back its armed presence. British commanders ceded security responsibility for Maysan, a critical province with Iraq's longest Iranian border and large oil reserves, at a colourful outdoor ceremony and military parade. Reading greetings from Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki, national security adviser Mowaffaq Al Rubaie expressed hope Iraq would take full charge of all of its 18 provinces before the end of the year. "Maysan province is the fourth.... To be followed by the three provinces of Kurdistan a month from now. Then Karbala and Wasit, followed by provinces one after the other until the end of the year," he said. Maysan is the fourth province to be handed over to Iraqi forces since July and the third transferred by British-led troops.

Two British Soldiers Killed In Iraq On 19 April 2007

Both were killed by an improvised explosive device in Maysaan Province. The soldiers were on a routine patrol in a Scimitar armoured vehicle when they were hit by the blast. Three further soldiers were injured, one of them very seriously. All casualties were taken by helicopter to Tallil airbase in Dhi Qar Province where they are receiving the best possible medical care.

US General Says Iran Now Supporting Iraqi Sunnis

[Next week: US General Says We Are Sure to Find Those WMDs If We Just Keep Looking – dancewater]

Iranian intelligence forces are providing support to Sunni insurgents in Iraq, in addition to Shi'ites, to destabilize the country and tie U.S. forces down, a U.S. general said on Thursday. The comments from Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, mark the latest escalation in U.S. accusations against Iran's Shi'ite government. "We are seeing some indicators of Iranian support to the Sunni extremist groups in Iraq, which is a development," Barbero said. "Detainees in American custody have indicated that Iranian intelligence operatives have given support to Sunni insurgents [Wanna bet they were tortured? – dancewater] and then we've discovered some munitions in Baghdad neighborhoods which are largely Sunni that were manufactured in Iran," he said. [Now this last one is probably true – and it is probably also true that there are Russian, Chinese, and American made munitions in Iraq. It certainly does not tell us anything that some manufacturer in some country made and sell munitions, and that they make their way to Iraq at some point. I am still waiting for the really high explosive stuff stolen in Iraq to turn up somewhere, like maybe the USA. – dancewater]

What Are Britain’s Special Forces Doing In Northern Iraq?

Initial reports suggested that the two killed were from the Royal Air Force and the British Army. But subsequent accounts state that at least one of the dead was a member of Britain’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) unit engaged in a “covert operational mission” in the north of the country. The Times reported that “an operation was underway to try to retrieve the two Puma helicopters, which had sensitive equipment on board as they were both assigned for special-forces operations.” The planes managed to crash land into an area controlled by the US military, where Black Hawk helicopters retrieved the dead and injured. It has always been claimed that British forces are based solely in the south of Iraq, around the city of Basra. But the Times continued, “Britain has a significant special forces contingent in Iraq, serving in the south and from Baghdad, with members from the SAS, the Special Boat Service (SBS) and the new support units, the Special Forces Support Group, made up of the 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, former covert army surveillance experts from Northern Ireland.” The Telegraph stated, “The Puma helicopters collided 12 miles north of the capital, near Taji, a military base that houses one of Iraq’s biggest counter-terrorism centres, from where the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) operates... “An officer at Multi-National Forces headquarters said the SRR had a substantial presence at Taji,” which is one of the main US-controlled military bases, located approximately 20 miles north of Baghdad.

COMMENTARY

The Risks Of Staying Vs. Leaving Iraq

Supporters of the war in Iraq, including most recently Senator John McCain, tell us that a series of awful consequences will certainly result if US forces disengage. This argument is offered with great confidence. Yet the costs of disengagement are less certain than is often argued, and the United States can reduce the risks that these costs will arise - and limit their consequences if they do. Supporters of the war predict six major disasters if US forces withdraw:

Al Qaeda will take over the country. This risk is now non existent. Al Qaeda's support is strongest among Sunnis, whom the Shia out number by three to one. The Shia control the military, the police, and numerous militias. The United States has ramped up its operations in Baghdad in part to stop the Shia from cleansing the Sunnis from Baghdad. There will be no caliphate in Baghdad, whether Americans stay or leave.

Iraq will become a new Afghanistan, to Al Qaeda's benefit. The most extreme among the Sunni insurgents may indeed be committed to international jihad, and they may continue to work clandestinely out of Iraq, as they do today. But these jihadis will not be comfortable. Iraqi Shi'ites despise them, and even many Sunnis oppose them. US intelligence will indeed have to keep an eye on them, and special operations forces may occasionally need to sneak back into Iraq to strike at them. These are capabilities the United States has spent billions building up since Sept. 11.

The current civil war (or wars) will escalate. Fighting may indeed intensify after a US disengagement. To come to an understanding of how wealth and power in Iraq will be shared, the political forces there must measure their relative capacity and will. The United States now stands in the way of such a measurement, and the US presence delegitimizes any outcome. The promise of a certain US withdrawal date may clear the heads of some Iraqi politicians; a negotiated settlement could start to look better to them than an escalation of fighting.

Genocide. The humanitarian consequences of this intensified fighting could be grave. But genocide happens against unarmed populations; all groups in Iraq are heavily armed. Still, the violent ejection of minorities from particular areas is likely. Instead of convincing minorities to stay in neighborhoods where they are vulnerable to murder by local majorities, the United States can help people resettle in parts of Iraq that are safer.

If the civil war intensifies, regional powers will rush in. This too is already under way, but escalation into a giant civil war is not in anyone's interest. Syria, Iran, and Turkey have Kurdish minorities which may become restive during such a war. The Saudis would likely prefer that their Sunni Arab friends make a deal, rather than wage a fight that they might lose. Even Iran, whose Shia co-religionists stand to win such a war, faces risks. The Arab Shia are not one big happy family; they kill each other in Iraq today. Most Iraqi Shia think of themselves as Arabs; heavy-handed Iranian intervention may energize their nationalist opposition. The United States can engage diplomatically to remind the regional players of their interest in stabilizing Iraq. If the United States leaves Iraq deliberately, and under its own power, it still has cards to play.

The worst case. The civil war escalates; outsiders back their friends; their friends begin to lose, so the war escalates to become a regional conflagration. Could happen, but one should not exaggerate the military capabilities of any of the local players. They are all heavily armed, but conventional warfare is not the strong suit of any of the regional actors, with perhaps the exception of Turkey. The Saudi forces, though equipped with modern weapons, are almost surely helpless without help from western contractors. Iran's air forces are obsolete and highly vulnerable to American air attack. Moreover, Saudi Arabia and Iran are one-crop countries; each depends on oil facilities that are vulnerable to attack by the other. A kind of Mutual Assured Destruction should deter both from risking general war.

Four years of experience strongly suggests that the costs to the United States of persisting in Iraq will be significant. Whatever success is achieved there, the end result will not be the stable liberal democratic vision of the war's supporters. Rather, after lots more killing, exhaustion may set in, partial deals may be struck, and factions may retreat to tend their own battered gardens. Call this what you will, but it cannot justify the costs incurred. And this outcome will not differ significantly from what will occur if the United States begins to disengage now.

OPINION: Four Years Too Many

Four years down the road from its invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US appears not only incapable of achieving a conclusive victory but also incapable of remaining in Iraq long enough to achieve half of what it set out to do. The withdrawal of American forces is now but a matter of time, which some take to signal the beginning of the end of the US- Zionist enterprise in the region. Yet what matters here is not the beginning of the end, or even the actual end of this project, but the aftermath upon which is pinned the hope of the birth of a new Iraq robustly interconnected with the rest of its Arab environment. Because it is impossible to envision a strong Arab world without the presence of Iraq, rescuing that country from its current plight and safeguarding its territorial integrity and Arab identity are the first steps towards the establishment of an Arab-Islamic alternative to the American-Israeli regional venture. Unfortunately, however, although we are now just beginning to glimpse the end of the American occupation, it is still impossible to discern a single sign that Iraq will survive as a country capable of picking itself up again in one piece and making a healthy recovery. Moreover, the withdrawal of American forces may not necessarily mean that the American- Zionist project will have thrown in the towel. Withdrawal may be no more than a tactic, a chance to regroup and then lash out again using different means to accomplish the same ends but via different targets. They may well have resigned themselves to losing the battle but resolved to win the war.

………..An honest assessment of Iraq from the invasion to the present will help dispel a good many illusions, a whole set of which concern the US. Take, for example, that entire body of literature that insisted that democratic countries behave in a more civilised manner than others; that they acted more responsibly and in keeping with the law. This theory, often used to justify tolerating nuclear weapons in the hands of certain pro-Western nations as opposed to others, sank to its ignominious end in the Iraqi quagmire. The world has seen how a diabolical clique of thugs, like the neo- conservatives in the White House, seized upon a combination of events and international circumstances to commandeer the decision-making process in, ostensibly, the most democratic nation on earth, and then turned the enormous military and economic machinery of that nation towards the perpetration of one of the most horrendous crimes of humanity ever. The current American administration, controlled by a band of ideological zealots no less dangerous than the Nazis, displayed nothing but utter contempt for democracy, the rule of law and universally cherished humanitarian morals. It launched an unprovoked war against an independent nation, against the will of the international community and without a UN mandate, and it blatantly lied, forged documents and falsified information every step along the way. However poorly calculated it was, this was not so much war as it was an act of premeditated armed robbery of unprecedented magnitude and whose toll in innocent human lives and wounded and displaced persons ranges into the millions. Add to this Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the illegal detentions and systematic torture practiced in other secret prisons and you realise how vast the distance is between the ideological rhetoric that trumpets democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and the actual practices of the administration that paraded beneath this rhetoric.

If those who perpetrated these atrocities and crimes against humanity are not brought to account before the international criminal court, then why exactly was that court established? - Hassan Nafaa

Another illusion that has not quite vanished yet, but probably will do so soon, has to do with the mutability of US foreign policy. Bush's bungling in Iraq was largely responsible for the defeat of the Republican Party in the mid-term congressional elections. Some take this as a sign of an immanent revolution in US foreign policy, and towards the Middle East in particular. I don't. The Democratic opponents to the policies of the current administration are motivated less by moral qualms than by electoral considerations. Opinion polls, in keeping with a culture that hates losers and cheers winners, have swung heavily against Bush. Nor should we forget that the recommendations of the Baker- Hamilton report that Bush so foolishly snubbed reflect a bipartisan consensus. Otherwise put the Democrats are running with a tide of opinion shaped primarily by the American money and lives that have been poured down the drain in Iraq (so far some 3,500 troops have died in this war, 25,000 were wounded and a total of three trillion dollars has been spent on the war). There will undoubtedly, therefore, be some change in US policy towards the Middle East but it is difficult to envision radical change. Whatever policy the Democrats advocate, it is bound to be pragmatic. For example, channels of dialogue with Syria and Iran may open up. Ultimately, however, US Middle East policy will run up against two obstacles: Israel's interests as marketed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the difficulty of the terrain due to the intricate interrelations between the situation in Iraq and the situations in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Because the horizon offers no prospect of a White House -- whether Democrat or Republican -- capable of handling such complex portfolio with the necessary adroitness, foresight and resolve, the chances are that the US, swayed by the pressures and manipulations of the Zionist lobby, will opt for a solution that for it would be lukewarm, such as withdrawal within the framework of a partitioned Iraq, but what would be for the Middle East a gateway to new and multiplying lines of confrontation.

Quote of the day: "Last year, I lost my daughter and my mother because of dehydration," said Zahra Muhammad, 35, who has been displaced since May 2006. "We couldn't afford cooling systems in our tent. My daughter was only four years old and couldn't stand the hard living conditions in addition to the very hot weather."