Clearday-TRForce
02-27-2006, 10:16 AM
BAGHDAD - AFP and *******
At least 13 Iraqis and two U.S. soldiers were killed in a series of rebel attacks on Sunday even as security forces kept a tight grip on Baghdad to quell sectarian violence unleashed last week.
At least eight people were killed and 32 wounded when mortars fell on two Shiite neighborhoods in southern Baghdad at around 5:30 pm (1430 GMT), an Interior Ministry official said.
Eight mortars fell on the two neighborhoods, two on a vegetable market in Al-Saidiya and the rest landed on houses in Abuchir district in southern Baghdad, the official added.
Two people were killed and six others were wounded, including two children, when gunmen in a car opened fire on a group of people playing football near Baquba, 60 kilometers (36 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police said.
In a separate attack in Baquba, gunmen stormed the house of a Shiite family and shot to death two men and wounded a woman, according to Saleema Abbas, the wounded woman.
Earlier in the day a bomb exploded in a minibus in the town of Hilla, 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of the capital, leaving five injured, a few hours after a police commando was killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in nearby Madain, officials said.
Two people were also wounded in an explosion close to a Shiite shrine in the southern city of Basra, while six policemen were wounded in two separate incidents in the northern city of Mosul.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said two soldiers died in a roadside bomb attack Sunday in Baghdad taking its military death toll in Iraq since the invasion to 2,291, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
Meanwhile, Britain's former ambassador to the country said on Sunday that Iraq is slipping into a state of low-level civil war.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was London's senior representative in Baghdad until 2004, said the conflict is increasingly pitting the country's rival ethnic and religious groups against each other. The sectarian fighting, he added, bore a resemblance to ethnic cleansing in some parts of the country.
"One could almost call it a low-level civil war already," Greenstock told British television channel ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby program.
He said that though he didn't believe a "classic civil war" would follow, he feared that local communities will look increasingly to militias for protection, ignoring central authorities in the process.
"The unity of the country, the forward progress of the country would be lost," Greenstock said.
The envoy, who served as British ambassador to the United Nations in the run-up to the 2003 war before being sent to Iraq, said "quiet assassinations" are almost commonplace in areas of the country.
Bus station hit, Iraqi leaders urge calm
Monday, February 27, 2006
Four days of tit-for-tat attacks leave over 200 dead and many mosques damaged, despite a daytime curfew on Baghdad; the defense minister warns of the risk of a civil war that 'will never end'
BAGHDAD - *******
A bomb killed 13 people at a bus station south of Baghdad on Sunday, breaking a relative calm after Iraqi and U.S. leaders appealed for an end to days of sectarian bloodshed that have pitched Iraq toward civil war.
The bomb destroyed a minibus as it drove out of a bus garage in Hilla, a mainly Shiite town surrounded by Sunni villages; it came two days short of the anniversary of the bloodiest single al-Qaeda bombing, which killed 124 people there a year ago.
Another bomb killed two U.S. soldiers overnight in Baghdad despite a third day of draconian curfew measures in the capital.
Hours earlier, following a round of calls to Iraqi leaders by U.S. President George W. Bush, Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made a midnight televised appeal, flanked by Sunni and Kurdish politicians, to Iraqis not to turn on each other after Wednesday's suspected al-Qaeda bomb at a Shiite shrine.
A three-hour meeting produced a commitment from the main political groups to form a unity coalition, although Sunni leader Tareq al-Hashemi said he was not yet ready to end a boycott of the U.S.-sponsored coalition talks.
Four days of tit-for-tat attacks have left over 200 dead and many mosques damaged, despite a daytime curfew on Baghdad that went into its third day on Sunday; the defense minister warned of the risk of a civil war that "will never end".
A traffic ban intended to help stifle the violence remained in force in the capital. But in addition to the attack on the U.S. soldiers, a mortar round landed near a Shiite mosque in the east of the city, though without causing injury.
Shiite local community leaders in Baghdad said several hundred Shiites had fled homes in the capital's restive Sunni suburb of Abu Ghraib and were being housed temporarily in schools and other buildings in Shiite neighborhoods.
Optimism:
Near Madaen, another flashpoint for Sunni-Shiite violence just to the southeast, a policeman was killed and two were wounded when their patrol was hit by roadside bombs.
In Hilla, police said it was not clear if the bomb was inside the minibus or exploded in the road as it passed.
Jaafari, under U.S. pressure to forge a national unity government after an election in December, the first that the once-dominant Sunni minority had taken part in, said he was hopeful that Iraqis would step back from sectarian strife.
"The Iraqi people have one enemy; it is terrorism and only terrorism. There are no Sunnis against Shiites," he said.
In Basra, fiery young Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr appeared at a rally to call for Muslim unity against U.S. forces and told his followers to hold joint prayers next Friday at Sunni mosques hit by past days' violence.
Shortly afterwards, a bomb wrecked the washroom of a Shiite mosque several km (miles) away; police suspected three men wounded in the blast had been planting the explosives.
Though Sadr's black-clad Mehdi Army militia have been accused by officials of taking part in attacks on Sunni mosques, Sadr himself, his influence rising within the ruling but factionalized Shiite Islamist bloc, denies ordering violence.
However, Shiites' show of force after the bloodless destruction of Samarra's Golden Mosque has exceeded any sparked by past al-Qaeda attacks and may strengthen militia leaders' hands in negotiations with Sunnis and with fellow Shiites.
Americans:
Resented on both sides, the 136,000 U.S. troops in Iraq find themselves caught in the middle. Under political pressure at home, Bush is keen to withdraw troops quickly and the present bloodshed has been a setback.
The White House said Bush, in his calls to Baghdad, had encouraged the leaders to "continue to work together to thwart the efforts of the perpetrators of the violence to sow discord".
Jaafari said that "all, or most" of the leaders who met on Saturday had "expressed the importance of accelerating the political process without any delay".
Sunni leader Hashemi called the meeting "a first step in the right direction", but said his Accordance Front would not rejoin formal coalition talks immediately.
Iraqi and U.S. officials blamed the bloodless but symbolic attack on Samarra's Golden Mosque on al-Qaeda, saying it wants to wreck the project for democracy in Iraq; al-Qaeda accused Shiites of carrying it out as an excuse for attacks on Sunnis.
I am really worried about these news. What we expected is occured in Iraq. Ethnic and domestic fight.
regards,
CDTRF
At least 13 Iraqis and two U.S. soldiers were killed in a series of rebel attacks on Sunday even as security forces kept a tight grip on Baghdad to quell sectarian violence unleashed last week.
At least eight people were killed and 32 wounded when mortars fell on two Shiite neighborhoods in southern Baghdad at around 5:30 pm (1430 GMT), an Interior Ministry official said.
Eight mortars fell on the two neighborhoods, two on a vegetable market in Al-Saidiya and the rest landed on houses in Abuchir district in southern Baghdad, the official added.
Two people were killed and six others were wounded, including two children, when gunmen in a car opened fire on a group of people playing football near Baquba, 60 kilometers (36 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police said.
In a separate attack in Baquba, gunmen stormed the house of a Shiite family and shot to death two men and wounded a woman, according to Saleema Abbas, the wounded woman.
Earlier in the day a bomb exploded in a minibus in the town of Hilla, 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of the capital, leaving five injured, a few hours after a police commando was killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in nearby Madain, officials said.
Two people were also wounded in an explosion close to a Shiite shrine in the southern city of Basra, while six policemen were wounded in two separate incidents in the northern city of Mosul.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said two soldiers died in a roadside bomb attack Sunday in Baghdad taking its military death toll in Iraq since the invasion to 2,291, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
Meanwhile, Britain's former ambassador to the country said on Sunday that Iraq is slipping into a state of low-level civil war.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was London's senior representative in Baghdad until 2004, said the conflict is increasingly pitting the country's rival ethnic and religious groups against each other. The sectarian fighting, he added, bore a resemblance to ethnic cleansing in some parts of the country.
"One could almost call it a low-level civil war already," Greenstock told British television channel ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby program.
He said that though he didn't believe a "classic civil war" would follow, he feared that local communities will look increasingly to militias for protection, ignoring central authorities in the process.
"The unity of the country, the forward progress of the country would be lost," Greenstock said.
The envoy, who served as British ambassador to the United Nations in the run-up to the 2003 war before being sent to Iraq, said "quiet assassinations" are almost commonplace in areas of the country.
Bus station hit, Iraqi leaders urge calm
Monday, February 27, 2006
Four days of tit-for-tat attacks leave over 200 dead and many mosques damaged, despite a daytime curfew on Baghdad; the defense minister warns of the risk of a civil war that 'will never end'
BAGHDAD - *******
A bomb killed 13 people at a bus station south of Baghdad on Sunday, breaking a relative calm after Iraqi and U.S. leaders appealed for an end to days of sectarian bloodshed that have pitched Iraq toward civil war.
The bomb destroyed a minibus as it drove out of a bus garage in Hilla, a mainly Shiite town surrounded by Sunni villages; it came two days short of the anniversary of the bloodiest single al-Qaeda bombing, which killed 124 people there a year ago.
Another bomb killed two U.S. soldiers overnight in Baghdad despite a third day of draconian curfew measures in the capital.
Hours earlier, following a round of calls to Iraqi leaders by U.S. President George W. Bush, Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made a midnight televised appeal, flanked by Sunni and Kurdish politicians, to Iraqis not to turn on each other after Wednesday's suspected al-Qaeda bomb at a Shiite shrine.
A three-hour meeting produced a commitment from the main political groups to form a unity coalition, although Sunni leader Tareq al-Hashemi said he was not yet ready to end a boycott of the U.S.-sponsored coalition talks.
Four days of tit-for-tat attacks have left over 200 dead and many mosques damaged, despite a daytime curfew on Baghdad that went into its third day on Sunday; the defense minister warned of the risk of a civil war that "will never end".
A traffic ban intended to help stifle the violence remained in force in the capital. But in addition to the attack on the U.S. soldiers, a mortar round landed near a Shiite mosque in the east of the city, though without causing injury.
Shiite local community leaders in Baghdad said several hundred Shiites had fled homes in the capital's restive Sunni suburb of Abu Ghraib and were being housed temporarily in schools and other buildings in Shiite neighborhoods.
Optimism:
Near Madaen, another flashpoint for Sunni-Shiite violence just to the southeast, a policeman was killed and two were wounded when their patrol was hit by roadside bombs.
In Hilla, police said it was not clear if the bomb was inside the minibus or exploded in the road as it passed.
Jaafari, under U.S. pressure to forge a national unity government after an election in December, the first that the once-dominant Sunni minority had taken part in, said he was hopeful that Iraqis would step back from sectarian strife.
"The Iraqi people have one enemy; it is terrorism and only terrorism. There are no Sunnis against Shiites," he said.
In Basra, fiery young Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr appeared at a rally to call for Muslim unity against U.S. forces and told his followers to hold joint prayers next Friday at Sunni mosques hit by past days' violence.
Shortly afterwards, a bomb wrecked the washroom of a Shiite mosque several km (miles) away; police suspected three men wounded in the blast had been planting the explosives.
Though Sadr's black-clad Mehdi Army militia have been accused by officials of taking part in attacks on Sunni mosques, Sadr himself, his influence rising within the ruling but factionalized Shiite Islamist bloc, denies ordering violence.
However, Shiites' show of force after the bloodless destruction of Samarra's Golden Mosque has exceeded any sparked by past al-Qaeda attacks and may strengthen militia leaders' hands in negotiations with Sunnis and with fellow Shiites.
Americans:
Resented on both sides, the 136,000 U.S. troops in Iraq find themselves caught in the middle. Under political pressure at home, Bush is keen to withdraw troops quickly and the present bloodshed has been a setback.
The White House said Bush, in his calls to Baghdad, had encouraged the leaders to "continue to work together to thwart the efforts of the perpetrators of the violence to sow discord".
Jaafari said that "all, or most" of the leaders who met on Saturday had "expressed the importance of accelerating the political process without any delay".
Sunni leader Hashemi called the meeting "a first step in the right direction", but said his Accordance Front would not rejoin formal coalition talks immediately.
Iraqi and U.S. officials blamed the bloodless but symbolic attack on Samarra's Golden Mosque on al-Qaeda, saying it wants to wreck the project for democracy in Iraq; al-Qaeda accused Shiites of carrying it out as an excuse for attacks on Sunnis.
I am really worried about these news. What we expected is occured in Iraq. Ethnic and domestic fight.
regards,
CDTRF