Photo: An Iraqi child sits on the floor in Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City district. Iraq's children are in dire straits, UNICEF said on Wednesday as it appealed for 42 million dollars to help those caught up in the horrors of sectarian killings, economic insecurity and mass migration.(AFP/Wissam Al-Okaili)
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
Baghdad Market Bomb Kills 25, Hurts 60
A car bomb exploded Tuesday at an outdoor market in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing 25 people and wounding at least 60 - the deadliest in a string of attacks that stoked sectarian tension in and around the capital. The blast occurred in Amil, one of a cluster of neighborhoods in southwestern Baghdad where Sunni-Shiite tension is running high three months after the start of the U.S.-led security crackdown. Following the blast, terrified survivors ran through the streets hauling buckets and pots of water to try to put out fires in shops that were shattered by the bomb. Volunteers tore through the rubble, searching for survivors. Sami Hussein, 25, was heading to the market with her 5-year-old son when she heard the explosion, "followed by gray and black smoke, which engulfed the market and made me to fall on the ground." She suffered shrapnel wounds in her face and legs. "I lost my son, and have no idea about his fate," she said. Medical officials at the hospital said he died in the blast. Fadhil Hussein, 32, who sells spices in the market, said he was thrown from his stall and wounded with shrapnel in his back and head. "I found myself in a pickup truck with other people. Some of them were bleeding and yelling," he said. No group claimed responsibility for the blast. But U.S. officials believe Sunni extremists are stepping up car bombings, especially against Shiite civilians, to enflame sectarian hatred and undermine public confidence in government security forces. [In this one incident, there were more Iraqi dead than we see in a week on the American side. None of these people were combatants. – dancewater]
In north Baghdad, gunmen wearing army uniforms stopped a bus carrying college students to a Shiite neighborhood, entered the vehicle and sprayed the passengers with gunfire, police said. Eight students were killed and two were wounded. At another fake checkpoint near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen killed six people from one family _ a woman, her 5-year-old son and four men _ and stole their car, police said. It was unclear whether the victims were Sunnis or Shiites. [The Wa Po makes a leap of faith into reporting this as a “fake” checkpoint. They offer NO information to support this claim. – dancewater] In Baghdad, mortar shells struck a college in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, killing four people and wounding 27. Four rounds landed around the office of prominent Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi, causing no casualties but destroying three cars, his staff said. Gunmen in two vehicles ambushed a car in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Khadra carrying three plainclothes police officers from the major crimes unit, killing two and wounding the third, police said. Another officer was killed when a roadside bomb exploded next to a police patrol driving through an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, police said. Three other officers were wounded. In all, at least 100 Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide Tuesday, according to police. They included 33 people found shot execution-style _ presumably by sectarian death squads _ and their bodies scattered across Baghdad.
Aid Organizations Reaffirm Secular, Humanitarian Principles
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have reaffirmed their professional, secular and humanitarian principles after accusations they were "missionaries in disguise". The accusations were that Christian missionaries in Kurdistan have been using aid to entice young Muslims to convert to Christianity. "We aren't forcing people to convert to Christianity. Our duty is to assist Iraqis who desperately need assistance. In the course of our work, sometimes we find people who want to know more about Christ and his beliefs and if they decide to convert, it isn't because we are forcing them or promising them money," said Eduardo Marotto, spokesperson for the Christ's Peace Organisation, a missionary Christian organisation which provides aid in Iraq. "Any person is free to choose his religion and it is not up to us to be responsible for that. They are adult enough to choose their beliefs. If someone asks me about my religion I am happy to speak but never offer material goods to help them to convert. Our work is only to deliver humanitarian assistance," Marotto added.
Traumatised Iraqi Children Lack Needed Care
Most Iraqi children have suffered trauma in the four years since U.S.-led forces invaded their country, and few are getting the help they need to cope, the United Nations said on Wednesday. The U.N. children's agency UNICEF said insecurity in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq had closed schools and made clinics and hospitals hard to reach, causing immunisation rates to fall. Only 30 percent of Iraqi children can access safe drinking water, with crumbling sanitation systems raising the threat of water-borne disease such as cholera, it said. Iraq reported its first suspected cholera cases of 2007 last week and diarrhoea, the second-highest cause of child illness and death in the country, is also on the rise, UNICEF found. Suicide attacks, bombings, kidnappings and other fighting between armed forces and sectarian groups have also claimed the lives of many parents, leaving children prone to abuse and exploitation, according to the report. "Every day, more and more children are losing family members, friends and neighbours, school days, their health, their hopes, even their lives," it said. "Most children have experienced trauma but few receive the care and support they need to help them cope with so much chaos, anxiety and loss." Children make up about half of the 4 million Iraqis who have fled their homes since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, which has unleashed deep tension in the oil-producing country. A spike in sectarian violence since last year has put Iraq on the brink of all-out civil war.
…….UNICEF, which has received $20 million of the $80 million it is seeking for projects in Iraq this year, estimated it would cost $42 million to meet the urgent needs of Iraqi children in the next six months. Its most important priorities include ensuring Iraqi children can access schools and health care and to protect them from exploitation, the agency said.
Child Death Rate Soars Amid Lack Of Money, Drugs
The rate of mortality in Iraq among children younger than 5 shot up 150 percent between 1990 and 2005, according to a report released earlier this month by the U.S.-based humanitarian aid group Save the Children. "Conservative estimates place increases in infant mortality following the 2003 invasion at 37 percent," the report said. In its most startling terms, the group estimates one in eight Iraqis - 122,000 in 2005 alone - never make it to their 5th birthday. Of these, half died in the first month of life. Pneumonia and diarrhea accounted for another 30 percent of child deaths. "In Iraq, children are dying from the easiest curable diseases worldwide like diarrhea and pneumonia, but with the deteriorated health situation in the country, the increase in the number of malnourished children and thousands of displaced living in poverty conditions, the possibility of reducing this high figure is remote," Jaffer Ali, a senior official and pediatrician in the Ministry of Health, told the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Pediatricians at Ibn Al-Baladi said leaking sewage and the lack of potable water have contributed to a startling increase in waterborne diseases, such as typhoid, which can place children at risk for circulatory failure, overwhelming infections and possibly death if not properly treated. Shortages of medications, equipment and doctors - more than half of whom have left the country since the invasion - have only made things worse.
“My tongue was cut off to stop me talking”
Thirty-eight-year-old Muhanned Sulaiman, says he cannot forget the day insurgents cut off most of his tongue after he decided to stop working for them. With a wife and two children to support, he was scared, but he had grown tired of the daily grind of a dangerous occupation and wanted to find an alternative job to support his family. He spoke with IRIN using hand signs and by writing on a piece of paper with the help of his wife, Hanan. He kept on sobbing during the interview as he recollected how terrible his days as an insurgent were, and how difficult it was for doctors to stop his bleeding. “I was working as an insurgent for two years. I was forced to do that after they threatened my family. I didn’t have any choice… each day I was becoming more exhausted and scared. “I never helped the insurgents kill people. My job was to help them draw maps and search the internet for military sites using my English, as I’m an English graduate and worked for a long time as a translator in the old Ministry of Information and Tourism. The insurgents wanted me to research information which might help them in their work. “For the two years I was with the insurgents they paid me for doing my job. It was good money - about US$1,000 a month - but I couldn’t stand it any more. What prevented me from being killed or forced to carry a gun to fight US troops was the friendships I made in my job.
………“Three days later I received a small parcel. My nine-year-old boy Muhammad and my seven-year-old daughter Rand, brought it to me and when I opened it, I found my tongue inside with a note which said they had been forced to do what they did, and that `my tongue was cut off to stop me from speaking too much’ and I should thank God that I was not killed.
Bureaucracy, security situation to blame for poor distribution of medical supplies
The centralized distribution of medicines in Iraq has meant hospitals have not been able to stock sufficient quantities, some doctors and analysts say. At present, every drug entering Iraq has to be tested by Kimadia, the government department responsible for quality control of medicines. All drugs go through the same procedure, regardless of their origin, or even if they have already been tested by the World Health Organization (WHO). “The quality control [system] is overwhelmed, as Iraq is now importing more medicines than before. The centralization of the administration makes quality control very slow due to bureaucracy, deteriorated security and lack of staff,” said Cedric Turlan, information officer for the Non-Governmental Organisations’ Coordinating Committee in Iraq (NCCI). It can take weeks, and sometimes months, for drugs to be tested. A consequence of this has been an increase in the smuggling of untested drugs.
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
In privatized war on Iraq, Iraqis do most of dying
The war in Iraq is killing nine civilian contractors a week on average, roughly three times the rate of last year, and U.S. government statistics show that non-Americans do most of the dying. The contractors -- mostly Iraqis and nationals from more than 30 developing nations -- perform jobs from guarding senior U.S. officials to translating, cooking meals, driving trucks, cleaning toilets and servicing weapons systems and computers. For every American civilian killed in Iraq in the first four months of this year, according to the statistics, four foreign contract workers died. Official figures show that 916 civilian contractors died from the beginning of the U.S.-led war in March 2003 to April 2007 -- at a steadily accelerating pace. Of those killed, 224 were U.S. citizens, according to a count provided by the Department of Labor to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). Rising contractor casualties reflect increased insurgent attacks on "soft targets" and the relentless growth of private security companies which now field close to 130,000 contractors who support 150,000 U.S. troops -- an unprecedented ratio in modern U.S. history.
Iraq's al-Sadr harbors ambitious plans
From hiding, possibly in Iran, U.S. nemesis and radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is believed to be honing plans to sweep into the power vacuum made all the more intense by news that his chief Shiite rival has lung cancer. And he's betting the U.S. won't keep its troops in Iraq much longer. Al-Sadr aides and loyal lawmakers have told The Associated Press the cleric's ambitions mean he will avoid taking on the Americans militarily as he did in 2004, when his Mahdi Army militia fought U.S. forces to a standstill. Instead, the 33-year-old cleric plans to keep up the drumbeat of anti-American rhetoric, consolidate political gains in Baghdad and the mainly Shiite south, and quietly foster even closer ties with neighboring Iran and its Shiite theocracy. The strategy is based in part on al-Sadr's belief that Washington will soon start pulling out troops or draw them down significantly, leaving behind a huge hole in Iraq's security and political power structure, al-Sadr's associates said.
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
New Strategy For War Stresses Iraqi Politics
Top U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq are completing a far-reaching campaign plan for a new U.S. strategy, laying out military and political goals and endorsing the selective removal of hardened sectarian actors from Iraq's security forces and government. The classified plan, scheduled to be finished by May 31, is a joint effort between Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American general in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. More than half a dozen people with knowledge of the plan discussed its contents, although most asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it to reporters. The overarching aim of the plan, which sets goals for the end of this year and the end of 2008, is more political than military: to negotiate settlements between warring factions in Iraq from the national level down to the local level. In essence, it is as much about the political deals needed to defuse a civil war as about the military operations aimed at quelling a complex insurgency, said officials with knowledge of the plan.
How to Help Iraqi Refugees
Quote of the day: "We used to have a War Office, but now we have a Ministry of Defence, nuclear bombs are now described as deterrents, innocent civilians killed in war are now described as collateral damage and military incompetence leading to US bombers killing British soldiers is cosily described as friendly fire. Those who are in favour of peace are described as mavericks and troublemakers, whereas the real militants are those who want the war. Tony Benn
Photo: An Iraqi child sits on the floor in 
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