*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[spring-peeper]

The problem with all this "counting" is that so many are buried withouth passing hospitals or morgues.
One should go counting every single death certificate written since the first day of the invasion, which is an impossible task. Furthermore I wouldn't count it for impossible that a number of victims were buried without - or before - having such a certificate. Especially during the glorious days of "liberating the poor Iraqis" with "shock and awe" mass bombing, and other such minor humanitarian raids. (Then I don't even speak of those who weren't found back or couldn't be identified.)

salaam.

Most of us are aware of this site -> Iraq Body Count, but thanks for the opportunity to repost the link.

 

[Aldebaran]

I know such a website exists. Even that well meant initiative can't possibly be accurate, but it is a start.
In the meantime human lives are devastated and constantly endangered by a variety of other factors (and I don't even want to mention environmental issues, such as DU contamination. Not a new issue at that).

salaam.

 

[ZAMB]

American Soldiers' Hatred Breeds 'Hadji Girl' Song and Video

This is hard to take - the song is disgusting, but even more disgusting is the laughing and cheering from the audience. If that is a marine's idea of a *joke* I think it's an indicator that the US should get out of Iraq.

If you want to understand why the war is going so badly in Iraq, it may help to examine the recent reaction to "Hadji Girl," the videotaped song about killing Iraqis by U.S. Marine Corporal Joshua Belile. The song became controversial when the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) discovered it on the internet and objected to its lyrics.............

The song is gruesome, to be sure, and CAIR complained that it celebrated the killing of Iraqi civilians. The video shows Belile performing the song before a laughing, applauding audience of fellow soldiers at their base in Iraq. Recognizing that the song could only bring bad publicity, U.S. military officials promptly issued a statement saying that it was "clearly inappropriate and contrary to the high standards expected of all Marines." Belile also apologized, saying the song was intended as "a joke" and that he didn't intend to offend anyone. ...... Here are some of the other comments about the song, from Little Green Footballs and elsewhere:

"Damn it, we are in a fucking war! Nobody whined about 'insensitivity' to the fucking Japs and Jerries."

"I expect more from the Pentagon. The State Dept & the CIA are just a bunch of cucumber sandwich eating fools. The Pentagon USED to be about waging war on our enemies. Now they just want to kiss up to them."

"I'm Proud of my fellow Marines in that video. That is EXACTLY the espirit de corps needed, the HIGH MORALE needed in the middle of a combat zone where those self-same jihadists are trying to kill those Marines every single day.

"Insensitive? Marines insensitive? God I hope so. We need them to kick ass and follow orders but we don't need them to be particularly sensitive. A sensitive Marine Corps will be the death of this country."

"One of the things CAIR didn't like was the phrase 'Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad, Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah' which makes fun of the Arab language. To hell with CAIR and to hell with the Arab language. ... And the Islamist pigs can keep going to hell."

As these comments illustrate, defense for the song quickly turns into traditional conservative anger at what they see as censorious "political correctness." They have a right, they insist, to be insensitive and hostile to Arabs and Muslims. I would argue, in fact, that this cultural xenophobia is the main theme of the song and that the violence in it is a secondary byproduct.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38084/

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq conflict leaves at least 130,000 displaced

Iraq's sectarian violence of the past four months has pushed the number of displaced people to above 130,000, parliament heard on Monday as members urged ministers to give more aid and security to contain the crisis.

"There should be more field visits to understand their plight," Sunni Arab parliamentarian Dhafir al-Ani told the assembly. "The government should take direct steps and provide security for displaced families, including at their camps."

Iraq's Ministry of Displaced and Migration now puts the number of internal refugees at 130,386, or 21,731 families, its spokesman Sattar Nowruz said. The number of registered displaced has climbed by as much as 30,000 in the last month, according to ministry statistics.

The actual figure must be higher as many thousands go uncounted, quietly seeking refuge with relatives or heading abroad. It seems hardly no-one in Baghdad does not have a friend, relative or neighbor who has had to move in fear.

Already a problem due to the violence and anarchy of recent years, the crisis deepened after the February 22 bombing of a major Shi'ite shrine in the town of Samarra set off reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war.

The problem has been likened to the "ethnic cleansing" of the Balkans in the 1990s and few expect a quick solution. Sectarian violence, which kills dozens of people a day in Baghdad alone, has started to force demographic shifts, with Shi'ites and Sunnis fleeing for safer areas made up of their own sect.

Mixed neighborhoods are breaking apart.

Some fear the Tigris river, between mainly Shi'ite east and Sunni west Baghdad, could become a front-line akin to Beirut's 1980s "Green Line" if new Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki fails to stop the sectarian killings.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Excellent read.

My first direct encounter with American Marines was from the Iraqi side. In late April 2003, I was attending the Friday prayers in a Sunni bastion in Baghdad. Thousands of people were praying and the devout flooded out of the mosque and laid their prayer rugs on the street and the square in front of it. A Marine patrol rounded a corner and walked right into hundreds of people praying on the street and listening to the sermon, even approaching the separate section for women. Dozens of men rose and put their shoes on, forming a virtual wall to block the armed Marines, who seemed unaware of the danger. The Marines did not understand Arabic. “Irjau!” “Go back!” the demonstrators screamed, and some waved their fists, shouting “America is the enemy of God!” as they were restrained by a few cooler-headed men from within their ranks. I ran to advise the Marines that Friday prayers was not a good time to show up fully armed. The men sensed this and asked me to tell their lieutenant, who appeared oblivious to the public relations catastrophe he might be provoking. He told me: “That’s why we’ve got the guns.”

A nervous soldier asked me to go explain the situation to the bespectacled staff sergeant, who had been attempting to calm the situation by telling the demonstrators, who did not speak English, that the U.S. patrol meant no harm. He finally lost his temper when an Iraqi told him gently, “You must go.” “I have the weapons,” the sergeant said. “You back off.”

“Let’s get the fuck out!” one Marine shouted to another as the tension increased. I was certain that a shove, a tossed stone or a shot fired could have provoked a massacre and turned the city violently against the American occupation. Finally the Marines retreated cautiously around a corner as the worshipers were held back by their own comrades. It could have ended worse, and a week later it did when 17 demonstrators were killed by American soldiers in Falluja, and several more were killed in a subsequent demonstration, a massacre that contributed to the city’s support of the resistance.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Dahr Jamail's latest piece

Habibi,

I'm still living alone at home, with everybody in my family out of the critical area. For the 5th day the black crows (Al-Mahdi Army, Sadr's militia) have been trying to get inside Adhamiya, in vain, from all directions. The fighting has been continuous, from 8 o'clock at night until early in the mornings.

Last night, the fighting was from all directions and started at 11:30 p.m. and ended at 3 o'clock in the morning. Six were killed yesterday in the southern part of our neighborhood. Anter Square, the main part of the city, is guarded by the Iraqi National Guard (Sunni Personnel) who were using heavy machine guns to defend the people of Adhamiya. In the other parts of Adhamiya, the river side was guarded by civilians of the Mujahedin. The fighting has been very severe, but the Shia militia did not get inside the area.

Why do the Americans and the militias they are backing cut the wires of our electricity every day? Isn't it sufficient to have electricity less than four hours per day? Is that not enough suffering to please them? For the fifth time we have repaired the wires.

The Mehdi and the Americans want people to leave the area but they will not succeed. We are ready to repair our electricity at any time and the transformers have been changed twice this month. We will not give up, no matter what. We will not give up our way of living. This is just a small part of the reality the people of Adhamiya are living.

Meanwhile, a refugee from Ramadi recently found his way to Baghdad. Imagine coming into a city seeking refuge where large districts, like the aforementioned, are under siege. The man, Ahmed, reported the following to my colleague Nora Barrows at KPFA radio about the condition in his city, which is being assaulted by US forces:

There were many helicopters, and the market area was burned while the helicopters were shelling. For instance, there were clashes in the main street of Ramadi by the mosque. Most of the bullets and bombs were coming from the sky, and they burned many stores and cars that used to belong to civilians. When they attacked the market area, there was a car parked close by and it was shot and bombed. People said, "My life is worth more than a car," so they tried to stay indoors or they tried to take shelter inside a mosque. Anything that moved - cars, people, anything - they got bombed and shot at.

The weapons of the American troops were very hard to identify. They have everything and they carry all kinds of weapons with them. You can see them carrying every kind of weapon they can, such as grenades, M-16s and many other kinds that we have never seen before. They use tear gas and grenades very often. For instance, there were two big tanks entering a very narrow street shelling everything: cars, houses, generators. They shot at whatever they could target. People could not look from the windows because of the [American] snipers. I saw the Americans in their tanks checking the areas. They were very hesitant and scared to leave their tank. They didn't even look from the tankís window because they were afraid of being attacked or shot at. Fighters were everywhere.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Oil exports boom as attacks on pipelines cease

For more than two years the attacks came like clockwork. As soon as the military secured and workers repaired the pipelines from Iraq’s northern oil fields, just when the valves were about to open, insurgents would strike.

But roughly three weeks ago they suddenly stopped, letting crude oil flow freely from Iraq’s vast reserves near Kirkuk.

Perhaps insurgents feared reprisals in Salahuddin province, where pipelines from Kirkuk flow to the country’s largest refinery in Beiji. Maybe terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death disrupted a chain of command that ordered the attacks, military officials said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Six bodies found across Iraq -armed confrontations in W. Baghdad

BAGHDAD, June 29 (KUNA) -- Unidentified armed men killed Thursday a police officer in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad 24 hours after his kidnap. A security source in the Iraqi Interior Ministry said that the body of Lieut.General Mohammed Nasser in the west Baghdad. Te source added that an armed group kidnapped on Wednesday the police officer, where his body was found today bearing torture marks and gun shots on a road side in Al-Ghazaliyah.Furthermore, a medical source said in a press release said that A-Hussein Hospital in Karbala received today the bodies of five people belonging to the same family, which includes women and children, who were shot dead.

Meanwhile, eyewitnesses' indicated that fierce armed confrontations occurred yesterday between an Iraqi tribal members and foreign fighters near Fallujah village in the western province of Anbar.The eyewitnesses told KUNA that several of the foreign fighters were killed during the clashes as they were trying to seize a residential compound

 

[Aldebaran]

Barkin Mad, it is in my view very sad that your postings in this thread (and elswhere) do not reach readers of US message boards (or US readers more in general).

salaam.

 

[laptop]

Excellent read.

Oh dear yes. Boys who still don't know where the fuck they are except that it's not their home State doing "intelligence"...

But I have a feeling that this one is going to be a watershed for many back in the USofA:

BEIJI, Iraq (AP) - A group of American soldiers in an insurgent-riddled town allegedly noticed a young Iraqi woman when on patrol and later returned to rape her, according to U.S. officials Friday. In an apparent cover-up attempt, she and three members of her family then were killed and her body was set on fire.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5923231,00.html

Shooting a family or two at Haditha... meh, they're just foreigners and boys will get worked up when one of theirs is killed. But (allegedly) planned rape and murders for coverup... that's a story that (I intuit) will come home to to more Americans.

 

[ZAMB]

I think this is an important summary [though a bit long] which should be read by anyone who still defends the US invasion of Iraq. I'm just posting the first and last paragraphs. Think - what if this was your country?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13719.htm

Great Moments in the History of Imperialism

National Public Radio foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR's Baghdad bureau, met earlier this month with a senior Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the NPR report as "a moderate" and as a person trying to lead his Shiite followers into practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked him: "What would you think if you had to go back to Saddam Hussein?" The cleric replied that he'd "rather see Iraq under Saddam Hussein than the way it is now."[1]

When one considers what the people of Iraq have experienced as a result of the American bombings, invasion, regime change, and occupation since 2003, should this attitude be surprising, even from such an individual? I was moved to compile a list of the many kinds of misfortune which have fallen upon the heads of the Iraqi people as a result of the American liberation of their homeland. It's depressing reading, and you may not want to read it all, but I think it's important to have it summarized in one place.

Yet, despite the fact that it would be difficult to name a single area of Iraqi life which has improved as a result of the American actions, when the subject is Iraq and the person I'm having a discussion with has no other argument left to defend US policy there, at least at the moment, I may be asked:

"Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power?"

And I say: "No".

And the person says: "No?"

And I say: "No. Tell me, if you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then asked you: Are you glad that you no longer have a knee problem? The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem." And many Iraqis actually supported him.

 

[laptop]

A former US soldier has been arrested and charged with killing four Iraqi civilians after raping one of them, the US Justice Department said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5142852.stm

As I said, I'm expecting that this will have more impact in the US than other cases, like Haditha. It really does portray an occupation force out of control. The interview with the wife of a member of a unit close to the one in the Haditha affair suggesting that they were as likely or not tweaked out on speed at the time is relevant.

Its impact in Iraq... hardly needs emphasised.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Ramadi to be turned "into a park"

: for park read 'Green Zone'. From the NYT. Full piece as its copied from elsewhere and no link was provided. Bold text my emphasis

In Ramadi, Fetid Quarters and Unrelenting Battles

RAMADI, Iraq, July 4 — The Government Center in the middle of this devastated town resembles a fortress on the wild edge of some frontier: it is sandbagged, barricaded, full of men ready to shoot, surrounded by rubble and enemies eager to get inside.

The American marines here live eight to a room, rarely shower for lack of running water and defecate in bags that are taken outside and burned.

The threat of snipers is ever present; the marines start running the moment they step outside. Daytime temperatures hover around 120 degrees; most foot patrols have been canceled because of the risk of heatstroke.

The food is tasteless, the windows boarded up. The place reeks of urine and too many bodies pressed too close together for too long.

"Hey, can you get somebody to clean the toilet on the second floor?" one marine yelled to another from his office. "I can smell it down here."

And the casualties are heavy. Asked about the wounded under his command, Capt. Andrew Del Gaudio, 30, of the Bronx, rattled off a few.

"Let's see, Lance Corporal Tussey, shot in the thigh.

"Lance Corporal Zimmerman, shot in the leg.

"Lance Corporal Sardinas, shrapnel, hit in the face.

"Lance Corporal Wilson, shrapnel in the throat."

"That's all I can think of right now," the captain said.

So it goes in Ramadi, the epicenter of the Iraqi insurgency and the focus of a grinding struggle between the American forces and the guerrillas.

In three years here the Marine Corps and the Army have tried nearly everything to bring this provincial capital of 400,000 under control. Nothing has worked.

Now American commanders are trying something new.

Instead of continuing to fight for the downtown, or rebuild it, they are going to get rid of it, or at least a very large part of it.

They say they are planning to bulldoze about three blocks in the middle of the city, part of which has been reduced to ruins by the fighting, and convert them into a Green Zone, a version of the fortified and largely stable area that houses the Iraqi and American leadership in Baghdad.

The idea is to break the bloody stalemate in the city by ending the struggle over the battle-scarred provincial headquarters that the insurgents assault nearly every day. The Government Center will remain, but the empty space around it will deny the guerrillas cover to attack. "We'll turn it into a park," said Col. Sean MacFarland.

Ramadi, a largely Sunni Arab city, is regarded by American commanders as the key to securing Anbar Province, now the single deadliest place for American soldiers in Iraq. Many neighborhoods here are only nominally controlled by the Americans, offering sanctuaries for guerrillas.

While the focus in Baghdad and other large Iraqi cities may be reconciliation or the political process, here it is still war. Sometimes the Government Center is assaulted by as many as 100 insurgents at a time.

Last week a midnight gun battle between a group of insurgents and American marines lasted two hours and ended only when the Americans dropped a laser-guided bomb on an already half-destroyed building downtown. Six marines were wounded; it was unclear what happened to the insurgents.

"We go out and kill these people," said Captain Del Gaudio, the commander here. "I define success as continuing to kill the enemy to allow the government to work and for the Iraqi Army to take over."

Government Mostly in Name

That day seems a long way off. The Iraqi government exists here in little more than name. Last week about $7 million disappeared from the Rafidain Bank — most of the bank's deposits — right under the nose of an American observation post next door. An Iraqi police officer was shot in the face and dumped in the road, his American ID card stuck between his fingers.

The governor of the province, Mamoun Sami Rashid al-Alwani, still goes to work here under an American military escort. But many of the province's senior officials deserted him after the kidnapping and beheading of his secretary in May.

The previous governor was assassinated, as was the chairman of the provincial council, Khidir Abdel Jabar Abbas, in April. At a meeting of the provincial cabinet last week, only six of 36 senior officials showed up.

"The terrorists want to keep Anbar people out of the government," said Taha Hameed Mokhlef, the director general for highways, who went into hiding last month when his face appeared on an American-backed television station here showing him in his job. He has since re-emerged. "My friends told me that the terrorists were planning to kill me, so I went to Jordan for a while," he said.

The Iraqi police patrol the streets in only a handful of neighborhoods, the ones closest to the American base. In the slow-motion offensive that has been unfolding, in which the Americans have been gradually clearing individual neighborhoods, nearly all of the fighting has been done by American marines and soldiers, not the Iraqi Army.

 

[Barking_Mad]

so much for killing zarqawi

Bodies flood Baghdad morgue despite Zarqawi's death

Baghdad's central morgue received 1,595 bodies last month — the highest number since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine sparked a wave of sectarian killings, a morgue official said on Wednesday.

 

[RhymnRzn]

A real "Green Zone" would heal the nation. "Black Zone" is a better tittle according to these works of death, anger, hate, vengeance, and bloodshed.

 

[Barking_Mad]

35 corpses found across Baghdad

Thirty-five corpses have been discovered in different areas of the Iraqi capital over the past 24 hours, most of them showing signs of torture, police reported.

Car bomb kills Iranian pilgrims at Iraqi shrine

A car bomb has killed 12 people, mainly Iranian pilgrims, near a Shiite shrine in the central Iraqi town of Kufa, raising new fears of sectarian violence in the war-torn country

 

[tangentlama]

I cited US figures a while back showing that the vast bulk of resistance attacks had been directed against US troops and not civilians. The effectiveness of these can be judged by the fact that there are huge areas of Iraq that the occupiers can't even walk into much less control, and that the attacks have created tens of thousands of injuries and thousands of dead soldiers going home in flag-draped coffins. Someone correctly pointed out that these figures went as far as December 2005, but didn't include more recent months. I am therefore glad to be able to bring you a Le Figaro article (posted on Marxmail) which picks up the story:

1,300 Iraqi Resistance attacks in greater Baghdad alone in June. Secret American report shows US minimizing Resistance attacks, focusing attention on al-Qa'idah car bombings to divert attention from highly effective "complex attacks" by hard core Iraqi Army Resistance fighters.

A secret American report has confirmed that the US occupation forces in Iraq are trying to hide the real strength of the Iraqi Resistance. The report, information from which has been acquired and published by the French newspaper le Figaro, discloses that there were 1,300 Resistance attacks in greater Baghdad alone in the single month of June 2006.

Georges Malbrurot in his le Figaro article published on 8 July refuted claims made by the American-installed puppet "Iraqi ministries of defense, the interior, and health," which indicated that in the month of May only 26 car bombing, 65 bomb explosions, two martyrdom operations, and 60 attacks with rocket-propelled grenades took place - i.e., an average of five violent attacks per day.

In fact, Malbrunet wrote, the truth was much more deadly. According to the data contained in the secret American report, a copy of which he had obtained, the number of homemade bomb explosions in May was 260, the number of rocket-propelled grenade attacks was 120 - ten times the official count.

The secret report noted that since February 2006, the Resistance carried out one complex operation in Baghdad every day, in which some 50 men and 10 vehicles took part. Most of the operations, the report said, were being carried out by soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Iraq (the Iraqi army from the period of President Saddam Husayn's rule).

Malbrunot wrote that according to the secret report, the US occupation forces "have been trying to hide the facts about those complex attacks, which reflect the effectiveness of the hard core of the guerrilla movement, preferring to report on the 'suicide attacks' carried out by 'foreign' jihadi fighters" of al-Qa'idah - the American nemesis so highly touted by the US media.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/07/le-figaro-on-iraqi-resistance.html

 

[ZAMB]

My first reaction to this story was "about bloody time" - but I'm afraid that it is just a meaningless gesture of protest, considering the stranglehold the US has on the UN Security Council. Surely no country has the right to invade another and then pass a law which gives them immunity from the consequences of crimes committed there?

Iraq says to ask U.N. to end US immunity
Mon Jul 10, 2006 5:07pm ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq will ask the United Nations to end immunity from local law for U.S. troops, the government said on Monday, as the U.S. military named five soldiers charged in a rape-murder case that has outraged Iraqis.

In an interview a week after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded a review of foreign troops' immunity, Human Rights Minister Wigdan Michael said work on it was now under way and a request could be ready by next month to go to the U.N. Security Council, under whose mandate U.S.-led forces operate in Iraq.

"We're very serious about this," she said, adding a lack of enforcement of U.S. military law in the past had encouraged soldiers to commit crimes against Iraqi civilians.


"We formed a committee last week to prepare reports and put it before the cabinet in three weeks. After that, Maliki will present it to the Security Council. We will ask them to lift the immunity," Michael said.

"If we don't get that, then we'll ask for an effective role in the investigations that are going on. The Iraqi government must have a role."

Analysts say it is improbable the United States would ever make its troops answerable to Iraq's chaotic judicial system.

Asked to respond to Michael's remarks, White House spokesman Tony Snow dismissed that as a "hypothetical game".

But Snow said: "We also understand Prime Minister Maliki's concerns and we want to make sure he's fully informed and also that he is satisfied, regardless of what the treaty situation may be on these issues, that justice truly is being done, and that he can make that demonstration to his people as well." Continued...

< Previous 1 | 2 | 3 Next > © Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsA...=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage3

 

[Barking_Mad]

Shiite Cleric Hints at Militia Attacks to Protest Israel’s Actions

The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr said Friday that Iraqis would not “sit by with folded hands” while Israel struck at Lebanon, signaling a possible increase in attacks from his mercurial militia, the Mahdi Army.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Gunmen Kill 41 in Raid on Mahmoudiya Market

Dozens of heavily armed attackers raided an open air market Monday in a tense town south of Baghdad, killing at least 41 people and wounding 42, police and hospital officials said. Most of the victims were believed to be Shiites.

Mortar fire hits Basra

Residents heard several dozen explosions from apparent mortar attacks on British bases around the Shi'ite southern city of Basra... Residents said it was one of the heaviest such attacks they could recall in recent times.

Corruption Cited in Iraq's Oil Industry

U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker told Congress last week that "massive corruption" and "a lot of theft going on" in Iraq's government-controlled oil industry is hampering the country's ability to govern itself.

Bomber kills 26 at cafe in northern Iraq

A suicide bomber detonated explosives Sunday inside a cafe packed with Shiites in northern Iraq, killing 26 people and injuring 22, an Iraqi general said. Gunmen seized a top Oil Ministry official, the second major kidnapping in as many days.

Senior Iraqi oil ministry official kidnapped in Baghdad

Gunmen kidnapped a senior Iraqi Oil Ministry official Sunday. Attackers stopped Adel Kazzaz, director of the North Oil Co., shortly after he left the ministry, beat his bodyguards and whisked him away, ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.

Two truck drivers killed, third taken hostage

Two truck drivers have also been killed and a third has been kidnapped in an ambush on a convoy on the road between Kirkuk and the central city of Tikrit.

Bomb near police patrol kills 1 in north Baghdad

One person was killed and two were wounded when a bomb exploded near a police patrol in north Baghdad, police said.

Two barbers killed in drive by shooting in Kirkut

In the northern city of Kirkuk, two barbers were killed in a drive-by shooting, police said. Drive-by shootings killed one person in Mosul and another in Muqdadiyah, northeast of the capital.

Four Iraqis killed, two wounded in Baghdad

Four Iraqi civilians were killed on Sunday and two wounded in two separate attacks in the province of Diyala, northern Baghdad, Iraqi police said.

 

[ZAMB]

You have to wonder what ordinary Americans are thinking, as you look at this list and see the number of things that could be fixed in the US at the cost of a few hours/days of war in Iraq.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13976.htm

Comparing the cost of war and domestic expenses

By Congressman John Murtha

 

[moono]

In the past 24 hours, almost 100 Iraqi civilians have been killed in violence across the country

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5186538.stm

I guess the coalition troops don't come out much anymore.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Ooops.

First Baghdad bank heist nets 1.4 billion

BAGHDAD, July 18 (KUNA) -- Unknown militants dressed as Iraqi security forces robbed the Al-Rafidain Bank branch in Al-Amiriya, western Baghdad, Tuesday taking a 1.4 billion Iraqi dinars trophy.

Sources from the Iraqi Interior Ministry said the robbers fled the scene in two green pick ups and a BMW.

A search for the cars is underway, as the descriptions have been dispatched to all security checkpoints across Baghdad.

This is the first bank heist since the looting that took place at several banks including the Iraqi Central Bank upon the fall of the former Saddam Baathist regime.

 

[Barking_Mad]

A very rough count of deaths reported by the media on the icasualties website suggests at least 721 people have died in the first 18 days of July.

http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx

 

[Barking_Mad]

Car bombing kills dozens in Iraq

A car bomb attack in the southern Iraqi city of Kufa has killed at least 53 people and left 103 injured. The bomb hit a crowd of labourers as they gathered close to a Shia shrine in the centre of the city at 0730 local time (0330 GMT), officials said. Witnesses said the labourers seeking work had gathered around a minibus which then exploded. Shia Muslims in Kufa, 160km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, have been the frequent targets of attacks.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Nearly 6,000 civilians killed in Iraq in May, June: UN

Nearly 6,000 civilians were killed in Iraq during the two months of May and June, according to a report prepared by UN Assistance Mission for Iraq.

"A total of 5,818 civilians were reportedly killed and at least 5,762 wounded during May and June 2006," the human rights report said Tuesday.

It said "killings, kidnappings and torture remain widespread in Iraq and the number of civilians killed continues to grow", adding that 244 women and 71 children were killed during these two months.

Most of the victims were killed in Baghdad.

It said professionals from the judiciary, health and education facalties were particularly targeted in the violence.

The UN document said that the Iraqi health ministry had acknowledged that at least 50,000 people have been killed since 2003 and some 150,000 people displaced from their homes because of the violence.

"The displaced people find themselves in a condition of vulnerability, lacking many basic rights and competing for limited services which increase inter-communal animosity in their points of arrival," the report added.

The report said displaced Shiites were seen heading to the south, while the Sunnis were travelling to the north.

A large number of Iraqis have been displaced following the upsurge of sectarian violnece since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra in February.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Civil war spreads across Iraq as bomb at Shia mosque kills 59

A civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims is spreading rapidly through central Iraq, with each community seeking revenge for the latest massacre. Yesterday a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives blew himself up outside the golden-domed mosque in Kufa, killing at least 59 and injuring more than 130 Shia.

In the past 10 days, while the world has been absorbed by the war in Lebanon, sectarian massacres have started to take place on an almost daily basis, leading observers to fear a level of killing approaching that of Rwanda immediately before the genocide of 1994. On a single spot on the west bank of the Tigris river in north Baghdad, between 10 and 12 bodies have been drifting ashore every day.
In Kufa, a city on the Euphrates 90 miles south of Baghdad, the suicide bomber drove his vehicle into a dusty square 100 yards from a Shia shrine at 7.30am. He knew that poor day-labourers gathered there looking for work. He reportedly said: "I need labourers" and they climbed into his van, which exploded a few moments later, killing them and other workers near by. "Four of my cousins were killed," said Nasir Feisal, who survived the blast. "They were standing beside the van. Their bodies were scattered far apart by the blast."

The severe escalation in sectarian killings started nine days ago when black-clad Shia militiamen sealed off the largely Sunni al-Jihad district in west Baghdad and slaughtered every Sunni they identified, killing more than 40 of them after glancing at their identity cards. Since then there has been a tit-for-tat massacre almost every day.

On Monday, gunmen - almost certainly Sunni - first attacked Shia mourners at a funeral near Mahmoudiya, a market town 20 miles south of Baghdad. They then shot another 50 people in the local market.

The failure of the newly formed government of Nouri al-Maliki to stop the mass killings has rapidly discredited it. The Shia and Sunni militias - in the latter case the insurgents fighting the Americans - are becoming stronger as people look to them for protection. After the explosion in Kufa angry crowds hurled stones at the police demanding that the militiamen of the Mehdi Army, followers of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, take over security in the city. Others chanted at the police - who began to fire in the air to disperse them - "you are traitors!" and accused them of being "American agents".

 

[Barking_Mad]

Turkey moves forward on push into Iraq

The Turkish military is moving forward with plans to send forces into northern Iraq to clear out Turkish Kurdish guerrilla bases, the prime minister said Wednesday.

But Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said officials were holding talks with the United States and Iraq in an attempt to defuse tensions.

Diplomats and officials have said repeatedly that Turkey's threats to send troops into Iraq were largely aimed at pressing the United States and Iraq to take action against guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, whose fighters have killed 15 Turks in the southeast in the past week.

Any Turkish cross-border operation is likely to inflame tensions with the United States and destabilize one of the only calm regions of Iraq. A push into northern Iraq could also threaten ties with EU countries, which have been pressing Turkey to improve minority Kurdish rights as a step toward reducing tensions in the largely Kurdish southeast.

And there is the possibility that Kurds in largely autonomous northern Iraq could fight the Turks if they enter the country. The guerrillas are mostly based in the Qandil mountains that straddle Iraq's border with Iran, about 50 miles from the Turkish border. They infiltrate southeastern Turkey from those bases to attack.

"Any unilateral cross-border moves would be a great mistake," said Qubad Talabani, representative in Washington of the Kurdistan regional government, which controls northern Iraq.

"There is no military solution to the PKK problem," Talabani, the son of the Iraqi president, told The Associated Press. "I think Turkey only sees a military solution."

Erdogan said Wednesday Turkish "security forces are proceeding with their work. Whatever step needs to be taken will be taken."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Violence soaring despite growing number of Iraqi forces

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Despite the addition of almost 100,000 U.S.-trained Iraqi troops in the past year, American efforts to pacify central Iraq and the capital appear to be failing, challenging a central assumption behind the U.S. strategy in Iraq: that training more Iraqi security forces will allow American troops to start going home.

The number of trained Iraqi soldiers and police grew from an estimated 168,670 in June 2005 to some 264,600 this June. Yet Baghdad's morgue is receiving nearly twice as many dead Iraqis each day as it did last year. The number of bombings causing multiple fatalities has risen steadily. Attacks on American and Iraqi troops last month grew 44 percent from June 2005.

"Even as the number and capabilities of Iraqi security forces have increased, overall security conditions have deteriorated," concluded a report that the Government Accountability Office submitted to Congress earlier this month.

.....

Some U.S. officials acknowledge privately that their hopes that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be able to rein in Shiite militia groups and persuade Sunni insurgents to negotiate may be misplaced. Many of the government's leaders, they note, are themselves linked to Shiite or Kurdish militias or guerrilla groups.

"I keep hope up - it's misguided perhaps - that cooler heads will prevail," said an American defense official in Iraq, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "I have to believe that; otherwise all of this has been a tremendous, tremendous fiasco."

 

[Barking_Mad]

British soldier killed, five others injured in Basra

A British soldier was killed and five others were injured on Wednesday during armed confrontations with insurgents in Basra, said the spokesman for British forces.

At least 14,438 killed in first six months of 2006

In a report released Monday, the United Nations said 2,669 civilians were killed in May and 3,149 were killed in June. The report charts a month-by- month increase in the number of civilians killed, from 710 in January to 1,129 in April. In the first six months of the year, it said 14,338 people had been killed.

18 bodies found on the outskirts of Mahmudiya

The bodies of 18 men with gunshot wounds, bearing signs of torture, were found on the outskirts of Mahmudiya, a town about 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. Among the bodies were those of three policemen.