Photo: A man carries the body of a child killed in mortar attack, in Sadr City, Baghdad's Shiite slum, Iraq, Tuesday, May 1, 2007. A string of mortar rounds hit the Shiite district of Al-Husseinya , northern Baghdad, killing 6 civilians and injuring 8 others. (AP Photo/Adil al-Khazali)
In Country:
Violence killed 1506 civilians in April, nearly a 20 per cent drop from the previous month, Iraqi government figures showed today. The number of civilians killed in March was 1861.
Note: I counted about 70 killed (in the news reports below) on this first day of May. 70 x 31 = 2,170 for May, if the violence does not change. I think the numbers above are an under-estimation of the extent of the real level of death and violence in Iraq today.
Baghdad:
The highly-protected Baghdad Green Zone has come under fire again. The U-S-controlled area is home to the American Embassy and Iraqi government offices. An Iraqi spokesman says at least six mortar rounds slammed into the zone this morning near the prime minister's office, the closest coming within a hundred yards.
An Iraqi government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity in discussing security issues, said six mortar rounds fell around the offices of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday and the closest came within 100 yards of the compound.
(update) U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said no military personnel were injured and no equipment reported damaged in Monday's strike. The explosions late Monday also were directed toward that part of the Green Zone, also known as the international zone, the official said.
An explosive device set more than 15 stores on fire in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Ur, followed by a campaign by U.S. forces in which 20 people were arrested, the Iraqi police said on Tuesday. "The explosion caused no casualties," a security source who asked not to be named told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq
A number of Kurdish peshmerga fighters serving in the Iraqi army and some Mahdi Army militia members were killed during a two-hour gun battle in Baghdad's Bayaa district, Iraqi police sources said.
Four civilians were killed and six others wounded when a mortar shell fell on a residential neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad, Iraqi interior ministry sources said.
Fierce clashes broke out on Tuesday between unidentified gunmen and a joint force of Iraqi army and police personnel in Al-Amel neighborhood in western Baghdad, a security source said. “Al-Amel neighborhood is witnessing, since this afternoon, fierce clashes between a large number of unidentified gunmen and elements of the Iraqi army and police forces,” the source, who asked not to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). “The clashes saw the use of heavy weapons and left casualties on both sides,” he added. No accurate number of casualties is yet available.
Around 2 p.m. a random gunfire by gunmen in Doura killed 1 civilian and injured 2.
Around 2:30 p.m. another mortar shell landed in Al Baia neighborhood killing one resident and injuring 2.
Around 3 p.m. A mortar shell landed in Al Saidiyah neighborhood. No casualties were reported.
Around 5:30 p.m. a road side bomb exploded in Al Bunouk neighborhood targeting civilians. The blast claimed the life of one civilian and injured 2.
Around 6:30 p.m. A mortar shell landed in Al Ealam area. The shelling claimed the life of one resident and injured 7.
Around 6:30 p.m. A mortar shell landed in Al Jihad neighborhood killing one resident and injuring 6.
Police found 15 corpses throughout Baghdad in the following neighborhoods: 1in Taji, 4 in Baia, 1 in Ameriya, 5 in Amel, 1 in Shaab, 1 in Mansour, 1 in Saidiyah, 1 in Bunouk.
An MNC-I Soldier died at approximately 10:30 a.m. Tuesday of non-battle causes.
Diyala Prv:
A hospital source said they received the bullet-riddled bodies of 10 people in the religiously mixed city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.
Just north of the capital, near the town of Khan Bani Saad in restive Diyala province, gunmen attacked a village and killed five people, police Lieutenant Ahmed Ali said.
Iskandariyah:
Travelers on a major highway out of Baghdad became the latest victims of violence in Iraq on Tuesday. Police said at least 14 people were killed in separate attacks. The first victims were on a minibus, and other people were shot in their cars by a group of gunmen standing on the highway.The attacks occurred about 30 miles south of Baghdad in a predominantly Sunni area dubbed the "Triangle of Death" because of frequent insurgent violence
Gunmen opened fire on a bus heading south from Baghdad to the mainly Shiite provincial capital of Hilla on Tuesday, killing 11 Iraqi men, women and children, police said. "The bus was carrying people to Hilla from Baghdad and was attacked as it passed Iskandiriyah," police Lieutenant Haider al-Lami said. "Three women and two children were among the dead, and three people were wounded." Police found the yellow minibus by the side of the road just north of the town of Iskandiriyah, a flashpoint for insurgent activity. Witnesses said six gunmen in two vehicles swooped down on the minibus and riddled it with bullets, the officer added.
Latifiyah:
Another four people were killed when a salvo of mortar rounds rained down on Latifiyah, a town 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the capital, not far from Iskandiriyah.
Another civilian was killed when a roadside bomb was triggered by an Iraqi army patrol in the same area.
Gunmen manning a fake checkpoint stopped a mini bus and killed three passengers and wounded five on Monday in the town of Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said
Mussayab:
Gunmen killed a worker and wounded three others in a drive-by shooting in the town of Mussayb, about 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
Basra:
An unidentified number of people were killed and wounded when an aircraft opened fire in Basra on Monday, the Multi-National Force (MNF) in southeastern Iraq said.
A British soldier died in Iraq on Tuesday after being involved in a road accident while riding his bicycle, the defence ministry in London said. The soldier, from the Royal Signals regiment, died in a field hospital after the accident at Basra Air Station in southern Iraq at around 8:00 am (0400 GMT).
Salah al-Din Prv:
A senior Iraqi police officer, who had been kidnapped in Baiji district, was found dead in the Sunni province of Salah al-Din, a police source said.
Police found a chopped head of the kidnapped police Brigadier Abdullah Mustafa near Beiji. Mustafa was kidnapped two days ago from Beiji town near his house
Kirkuk:
Six explosive charges went off near a number of civilian houses in the city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, causing severe damage to several houses and vehicles, an official security source said. "One of the houses belongs to a policeman in al-Nasr neighborhood," a source in the Kirkuk police command's operations room told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq
In northern Iraq, insurgents in the disputed oil city of Kirkuk killed a blacksmith who refused to help them, police said. "They forced him to sit inside his car and then set it on fire after he refused to manufacture the implements they use in their attacks," said Captain Abdullah Mohammed.
Insurgents also killed three other people elsewhere in the city, one of them a policeman, he added.
Al Anbar Prv:
A policeman was killed and his house blown up by gunmen, an Iraqi police source in Falluja, the largest city in Sunni Anbar province, said.
Thanks to whisker for the links above.
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
The Accursed: Widows of Iraq’s Torn-Apart Society
Um Noor fled to a Sunni area where she believed she would find sanctuary, only to be warned that her remaining children were at risk from hitmen on her side of the sectarian divide. The reason: her husband had been Shi’ite. That made her children Shi’ites - potential targets for Sunni gunmen with a particular distaste for mixed marriages. She now keeps the children locked in a borrowed house: two sons and two daughters aged 11 to 22 who hardly dare to feel the sun on their faces, let alone go to school or earn some much needed cash. Um Noor has resolved to keep them there along with her late brother’s children - the eldest aged seven, the youngest a girl of six months - until order is restored in Baghdad. The way the US-Iraq security plan for the city is going, they could be in for a long and perilous wait. Until March last year, Um Noor thought little of politics or such apparently trivial matters as which of her neighbours were Sunni or Shi’ite. When she married Abdul Zahra, an electrician, more than 20 years ago, nobody cared that they were from different sects. They moved into an apartment he built on the roof of her parents’ home and had three sons and two daughters. The fall of Saddam in 2003 barely touched their family, but the bombings and shootings that followed began taking a toll on the lives of those around them. Two years ago the first reports of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad chilled the family’s hearts. Yet Um Noor, like many women in mixed marriages, felt safe. Surely, she reasoned, anyone could see that being married to a Shi’ite was proof that she was nonsectarian. She thought she was above the fray. This sense of security was shattered by the bomb that exploded on a road as her 53-year-old husband happened to be passing on his way to a job. Her grieving was compounded by fear, as fighting broke out last summer between the Shi’ite majority in Amil district and Sunni members of the Janabi tribe, to which she belonged. Hundreds were killed. With nowhere else to go, Um Noor stayed put in the house where she had grown up. Her brother Raed al-Janabi, who delivered bread in the area, also remained with his family.
Sadr Urges Wall Protest by Paint
A three-mile wall around a neighborhood of Baghdad became a symbol of the American occupation that Sunnis and Shiites could united against, with Iraq’s Shiite leader playing the unlikely role of champion of the Sunnis. Now, Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who leads a militia that is showing signs of possible resurgence in clashes with United States forces, is seeking to turn the many other concrete barriers around Baghdad into billboards for anti-American messages. In a statement reported by Agence France-Presse, Mr. Sadr called on followers “to draw magnificent tableaux that depict the ugliness and terrorist nature of the occupier, and the sedition, car bombings, blood and the like he has brought upon Iraqis.” An Iraqi artist beat Mr. Sadr to at least one set of walls near the Baghdad Hotel, but had far more neutral plans. Baquir al-Sheik and 40 other artists started painting historic murals and “idyllic scenes of Iraq’s southern marshes and western deserts,” according to USAToday. Both efforts would further dilute the presence of murals remaining from the Saddam Hussein era. While many were destroyed or defaced, “the country is trying to figure out whether to save these objects as memorials to history or wipe them out,” The Times’s Kirk Semple wrote earlier this month.
Residents Come Together To Help Displaced Families
Some families in Baghdad have started working together to collect food and essential items for displaced people living in makeshift camps on the outskirts of the capital - an initiative that has been welcomed by local NGOs. "The idea came from a child who was missing two of his friends who were displaced. His family decided to take the child to visit them. When they got back home he asked his mother to send some food to his friends' families. His mother then spoke about it to a neighbour of theirs as the situation of the displaced was desperate," said Sa'ad Ruweidi, one of the organisers of the project. "Since then, hundreds of families have been collecting food and other items from their neighbours to send to camps for IDPs [internally displaced people]. These items have been helping the displaced survive, as NGOs are not able to cope and with the increase in violence are scared to go to such areas," Ruweidi added. Despite its extremely volatile situation, Baghdad has more displaced people living there than any other city in Iraq, with about 120,000 people displaced since February 2006, according to a recent report by the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI). It added that many of these were displaced from within Baghdad.
Iraqi Doctors Welcome Refugee Agency Contribution For Hospitals
Iraqi doctors in Damascus have welcomed the announcement today by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) that it is contributing US $2 million to the Syrian Ministry of Health towards the strengthening of medical facilities available for more than one million Iraqi refugees in Syria. “Many Iraqi refugees need urgent medical help and Syrian private hospitals are too expensive,” Ayad Tariq, an Iraqi doctor who fled Baghdad in July 2006, told IRIN. “I’m doing nothing here and I want to help the other refugees, even if I work for free. Most of the Iraqi doctors here are unemployed and we need and want to be practicing,” he said. Iraqi refugees are forbidden by the Syrian government from seeking employment.
As British Draw Down, Violence in Basra Is Up
Thundering rocket and mortar strikes have become a near-daily occurrence at British bases in this city. British soldiers who once patrolled on foot in berets and no body armor now venture downtown only in armored convoys. Although the violence pales in comparison to Baghdad, seven British soldiers have been killed in Basra in April, three by gunfire and four when a roadside bomb tore through their Warrior fighting vehicle.
The deaths pushed Britain's monthly toll in Iraq to 11, the highest since 27 of its troops were killed in March 2003 during the invasion, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks U.S. and British military casualties in Iraq. The increase in violence comes as Britain begins to disengage from southern Iraq, leaving Shiite political parties and their militias to battle over the spoils. At stake is control of political patronage in Iraq's second-largest city and of the billions of dollars in oil that flow through the country's only seaport. In the latest power struggle, Gov. Mohammed Waili's rivals on the Basra provincial council voted Saturday to unseat him, leaving the city of Basra on tenterhooks as residents wait to see how he — and his gunmen — will respond. In sharp contrast to the U.S. military buildup, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in February that his country would withdraw 1,600 of its 7,200 troops in the spring, though British forces would continue to provide backup and training to Iraqis at least until 2008. Britain has already turned over three southern provinces to Iraqi control and has pulled out of three bases in and around Basra, the last province under its authority. British troops are expected to leave a fourth base at a former presidential palace by summer's end. Most British officials and troops have retreated to a safer location at the airport on the city's southwestern outskirts.
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
Al Masri Believed Killed in Iraq
The al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been killed in a fight between insurgents north of Baghdad, the interior ministry claimed today. Brigadier General Abdul Kareem Khalaf told Reuters: "We have definite intelligence reports that al-Masri was killed today." Another source in the ministry said al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, had been killed. Brig Gen Khalaf said Iraqi and US forces were not involved. The US military said it could not confirm the death. In February the Iraqi government said al-Masri had been wounded by Iraqi troops but escaped in a clash north of Baghdad after soldiers stormed a base near Balad. Al-Masri, an Egyptian, assumed the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq after the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike in June 2006. The US government in 2005 set a $50,000 reward for al-Masri's capture, later raising it to $5m. Security experts say he became a terrorist in 1982 when he joined Ayman al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He probably entered Iraq in 2002, before al-Zarqawi, and may have helped establish the first al-Qaida cell in the Baghdad area.
Al Qaeda Denies Reports Top Leader in Iraq Killed
An Iraqi insurgent umbrella group denied Tuesday that the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed, saying he was alive and safe, according to an Internet statement. ''The Islamic State of Iraq reassures the Ummah (nation) that Sheik Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, God protect him, is alive and he is still fighting the enemy of God,'' the Islamic State said in a written statement posted on a Web site commonly used by insurgents.
In Symbolic Move, Iraqi Parliament Decides To Ban Foreign Forces From Getting Close To Shiite Holy Shrine In Baghdad
In a symbolic move, the Iraqi parliament Monday called for banning U.S. and other foreign troops from getting within one kilometer (half a mile) from one of the Shiite Muslims holiest shrines in Iraq a day after American forces carried a raid nearby, a member of parliament said Monday. The protest vote led by radical anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc came a day after a raid by U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Kazimiyah, which includes the shrine that contains the tombs of two Shiite saints. The U.S. military said the joint operation was aimed at capturing "high-value individuals" believed to be meeting in the area, but the troops came under small-arms fire after setting up a cordon, and people burned tires in the streets. One Iraqi soldier and eight gunmen were killed in the operation, the military said. Thousands of people took to the streets of Kazimiyah on Monday, waving Iraqi flags and posters of al-Sadr and his late father to protest the operation so near some of Shiite Islam's holiest sites as funerals were held for those killed.
Individuals breaking off Moqtada al-Sadr`s Army
Individual gunmen and sometimes whole units are breaking off Moqtada al-Sadr's Army, adding a new dimension to Iraq's already brutal kaleidoscope of violence, a media report said on Monday. Weeks ago Sadr issued orders for his fighters to lie low as thousands of new US and Iraqi soldiers deployed throughout Baghdad. For the most part they have obeyed and the resulting drop in sectarian killings was the best news that US commander Gen David Petraeus had to report last week, as he pleaded with Congressional leaders to give his security plan time to work. Now individual gunmen and sometimes whole units from Sadr's Mahdi Army are breaking off on their own, said a news agency The militiamen "are under a lot of pressure, so it's natural for them to shed pieces," a coalition official familiar with the group said. In Baghdad, after an initial dramatic drop, the number of corpses being found each morning is on the rise again. Outside the capital, fighters fleeing south have linked up with local Mahdi units; their presence is upsetting the uneasy balance of power struck between various Shiite groups in the region.
Sunni Ministers Threaten to Quit Cabinet in Iraq
The largest bloc of Sunni Arabs in the Iraqi Parliament threatened to withdraw its ministers from the Shiite-dominated cabinet on Monday in frustration over the government's failure to deal with Sunni concerns. President Bush stepped in to forestall the move, calling one of Iraq's two vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni Arab, and inviting him to Washington, according to a statement issued by Hashimi's office and the White House. The bloc, known as the Iraqi Consensus Front and made up of three Sunni Arab parties, "has lost hope in rectifying the situation despite all of its sincere and serious efforts to do so," the statement said. If the Sunni group followed through on its threat, it would further weaken a government already damaged by the pullout two weeks ago of six cabinet ministers aligned with the renegade Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr and further erode American efforts to promote reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites. Also on Monday, the White House expressed concern about a report in The Washington Post that aides to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki were involved in the arrests or removal of at least 16 army and police commanders, at least nine of whom are Sunni, who had been fighting Shiite militias.
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
Forty-Nine Countries Confirm Iraq Conference Attendance
Forty-nine countries have confirmed they will attend a conference on Iraq in Egypt on May 3-4. The Iraqi delegation will be headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, while most other countries will be represented by their foreign ministers, the official MENA agency said. The meetings in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh -- one on security and the other among Iraqi donors aiming to slash Baghdad's foreign debt and boost reconstruction efforts -- will involve all Iraq's neighbors. Also included are the five permanent UN Security Council members plus representatives from the UN, the European Union, Canada, Germany and Japan. Thursday's meeting will be within the framework of the International Compact with Iraq (ICI), launched in Baghdad in July with UN and World Bank support. The compact, which has strong support from Washington, has goals that include Iraq's equal treatment of all its ethnic groups, an equitable partition of the country's oil export revenues and support for the government to fight corruption and practice good governance. The ICI is to be adopted on Thursday, after three sessions, including two that are closed, according to state-owned daily Al-Akhbar.
U.S. Cites 91 Percent Rise In Terrorist Acts in Iraq
The number of terrorism incidents in Iraq -- and resulting deaths, injuries and kidnappings -- skyrocketed from 2005 to 2006, according to statistics released by U.S. counterterrorism officials yesterday. Of the 14,338 reported terrorist attacks worldwide last year, 45 percent took place in Iraq, and 65 percent of the global fatalities stemming from terrorism occurred in Iraq. In 2005, Iraq accounted for 30 percent of the worldwide terrorist attacks. The figures, compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and released with the annual State Department Country Reports on Terrorism, showed that the number of incidents in Iraq rose 91 percent, from 3,468 in 2005 to 6,630 in 2006. Almost all of those incidents involved the death, injury or kidnapping of at least one person. All told, the number of people killed, injured or kidnapped as a result of terrorism in Iraq jumped 87 percent, from 20,685 to 38,713.
COMMENTARY
Something About “Liberation”
There is not one person I know who has not been affected and whose life has not been altered, read - forever changed by so much "liberation". You don't even have to be an Iraqi. This "liberation" has served as a perfect mirror reflecting the moral bankruptcy of some and the resilience of others... Those who are faithful to Iraq - the concept of it - (now we are talking about concepts since the Reality of what was Iraq is something of the past!), those who are close to Iraq in spirit and mind lose sleep too... I have received tons of mails from all over the world. Africa, India, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the USA. Those who are close to Iraq in spirit feel alienated from their peers. They suddenly feel out of place, they suddenly no longer feel as if they belong to what was deemed a "familiar" environment. This "liberation" has affected them too... Seems they, too, are as unable to handle so much "freedom"... But they are a minority. I like to call them the "feeling" minority. These people and all honors to them have not lost the capacity to feel...Praise them for they have become a rare breed. Some write to me expressing their own pain, some write to me telling me how they feel strangers in their own land and some write to me thanking me for "freeing" them with my anger...giving them that inner space and permission to express the repressed taboos of the "politically correct", to formulate their own anger vis a vis the lies and the deceptions... And they write to me expressing their disgust.
Still Waiting For The Times, Too
What The Times says: It has long been evident that President Bush decided to invade Iraq first, and constructed his ramshackle case for the war after the fact.
What The Times does NOT say:
Unprovoked attacks against other nations are war crimes, and Mr. Bush and his administration should be removed from office and placed under arrest.
If the former is evident (and it is), then the latter is the logical conclusion. Why can't The Times just say it?
Quote of the day: To announce there should be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by this President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American Public. – Theodore Roosevelt
Photo: A man carries the body of a child killed in mortar attack, in 
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