Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Media: AFP
Byline:Ammar Karim
Date: n/a
BAGHDAD, Aug 27, 2006 (AFP) - A series of deadly suicide bombings and
shootings across Iraq killed at least 59 people Sunday in a brutal response
to premier Nuri al-Maliki's attempts to stitch his wounded country back
together.
One day after Maliki won a promise from tribal leaders to rein in Iraq's
violent factions, bombers carried out deadly attacks across the country,
with four targeting the northern Kurdish minority that left 15 people dead.
Sunday's savagery was a blow to Maliki's authority on a day in which he once
again insisted that Iraq is not slipping into all-out sectarian conflict.
"The violence is on the decrease, and our security ability is increasing,"
Maliki said in an interview with CNN television. "I want to assure he who
loves Iraq that Iraq will never be in a civil war."
Shortly after the interview was broadcast, gunmen stormed a market in
Khallis, a mainly-Shiite town north of Baghdad, and sprayed automatic fire
indiscriminately into a crowd, killing 14 people and wounding 25.
Earlier, two near simultaneous suicide car bomb attacks on Kurdish targets
killed 10 and wounded 50 more in the ethnically mixed northern Iraqi city of
Kirkuk, police Brigadier General Burhan Tayib told AFP in the city.
One attack hit a religious shrine owned by the family of Iraq's Kurdish
President Jalal Talabani, the other the home of a Kurdish police chief,
Colonel Ahmed Abdallah's, whose son was among the dead, Tayib said.
Both attacks took place in the Iskan district, a stronghold of Talabani's
tribe and of his party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Kirkuk, an
oil-rich city which is claimed by both Arabs and the Kurds.
A third suicide car bomber had blown himself up earlier near the PUK office
in Kirkuk, killing one guard and wounding 16 party members, police said.
In yet another attack on Kurds, four Kurdish policemen -- including a young
police academy graduate on his way to meet his fiancee to arrange their
wedding -- were killed by alleged Sunni extremists, police said.
Insurgents also targeted Baghdad, the southern city of Basra and Diyala
province -- a hotbed of fighting between rival sectarian death squads --
where at least 26 people, including the 14 mowed down in the market, were
killed,
Six civilians, including two women, were killed when a booby-trapped
roadside bomb exploded in a crowded street in Khallis, north of Baquba, the
capital of Diyala, police officers told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Six others were killed in a spate of shootings around Baquba, while two
truck drivers and a former policeman were kidnapped. Two corpses were also
found near the city.
Baghdad, where a major security operation has been in place since July, saw
some major attacks on Sunday leaving at least 11 dead, after a relative lull
in violence in the past few days.
A suicide bomber ploughed an explosives-laden van into the parking lot of
the state-owned Al-Sabha newspaper, detonating his deadly cargo after coming
under fire from security guards.
"Two people were killed and 25 others wounded. They all were employees of
the newspaper," Karim al-Rubaiya, Al-Sabah's technical editor told AFP.
The blast devastated the front of the two-storey concrete office building
and strewed the blackened wreckage of a fleet of cars across the car park.
An apparent suicide attack on a bus killed at least five people and wounded
15 in the busy commercial heart of the capital, near the Palestine Hotel,
which was once famous as a centre for the international media.
Gunmen also killed four of former Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Abd Mutlaq
al-Juburi's bodyguards in an ambush on their car in Baghdad's Ameriyah
neighbourhood, a security official said.
In the southern Shiite city of Basra, a suicide bomber on a motorbike killed
seven people and wounded 10 more in an attack on a marketplace, police told
AFP at the scene.
"As he arrived he just parked in the middle of a crowded area and he blew
himself up," said 35-year-old eye-witness Said Karim Mohammed, who had been
shopping in the popular fruit market in the Hayaniyah district of the town.
As he spoke, ambulances were ferrying the wounded to nearby hospitals.
Sunday's brutal attacks were another reminder of the violence that Iraqi
health officials say kills at least 100 people daily, and came one day after
Maliki secured a pledge from Iraqi tribal leaders to quell the fighting.
Since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra on February 22, Iraq
has been engulfed in tit-for-tat Shiite-Sunni bloodshed that has killed
thousands and pushed it to the brink of full civil war.
Byline:Ammar Karim
Date: n/a
BAGHDAD, Aug 27, 2006 (AFP) - A series of deadly suicide bombings and
shootings across Iraq killed at least 59 people Sunday in a brutal response
to premier Nuri al-Maliki's attempts to stitch his wounded country back
together.
One day after Maliki won a promise from tribal leaders to rein in Iraq's
violent factions, bombers carried out deadly attacks across the country,
with four targeting the northern Kurdish minority that left 15 people dead.
Sunday's savagery was a blow to Maliki's authority on a day in which he once
again insisted that Iraq is not slipping into all-out sectarian conflict.
"The violence is on the decrease, and our security ability is increasing,"
Maliki said in an interview with CNN television. "I want to assure he who
loves Iraq that Iraq will never be in a civil war."
Shortly after the interview was broadcast, gunmen stormed a market in
Khallis, a mainly-Shiite town north of Baghdad, and sprayed automatic fire
indiscriminately into a crowd, killing 14 people and wounding 25.
Earlier, two near simultaneous suicide car bomb attacks on Kurdish targets
killed 10 and wounded 50 more in the ethnically mixed northern Iraqi city of
Kirkuk, police Brigadier General Burhan Tayib told AFP in the city.
One attack hit a religious shrine owned by the family of Iraq's Kurdish
President Jalal Talabani, the other the home of a Kurdish police chief,
Colonel Ahmed Abdallah's, whose son was among the dead, Tayib said.
Both attacks took place in the Iskan district, a stronghold of Talabani's
tribe and of his party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Kirkuk, an
oil-rich city which is claimed by both Arabs and the Kurds.
A third suicide car bomber had blown himself up earlier near the PUK office
in Kirkuk, killing one guard and wounding 16 party members, police said.
In yet another attack on Kurds, four Kurdish policemen -- including a young
police academy graduate on his way to meet his fiancee to arrange their
wedding -- were killed by alleged Sunni extremists, police said.
Insurgents also targeted Baghdad, the southern city of Basra and Diyala
province -- a hotbed of fighting between rival sectarian death squads --
where at least 26 people, including the 14 mowed down in the market, were
killed,
Six civilians, including two women, were killed when a booby-trapped
roadside bomb exploded in a crowded street in Khallis, north of Baquba, the
capital of Diyala, police officers told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Six others were killed in a spate of shootings around Baquba, while two
truck drivers and a former policeman were kidnapped. Two corpses were also
found near the city.
Baghdad, where a major security operation has been in place since July, saw
some major attacks on Sunday leaving at least 11 dead, after a relative lull
in violence in the past few days.
A suicide bomber ploughed an explosives-laden van into the parking lot of
the state-owned Al-Sabha newspaper, detonating his deadly cargo after coming
under fire from security guards.
"Two people were killed and 25 others wounded. They all were employees of
the newspaper," Karim al-Rubaiya, Al-Sabah's technical editor told AFP.
The blast devastated the front of the two-storey concrete office building
and strewed the blackened wreckage of a fleet of cars across the car park.
An apparent suicide attack on a bus killed at least five people and wounded
15 in the busy commercial heart of the capital, near the Palestine Hotel,
which was once famous as a centre for the international media.
Gunmen also killed four of former Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Abd Mutlaq
al-Juburi's bodyguards in an ambush on their car in Baghdad's Ameriyah
neighbourhood, a security official said.
In the southern Shiite city of Basra, a suicide bomber on a motorbike killed
seven people and wounded 10 more in an attack on a marketplace, police told
AFP at the scene.
"As he arrived he just parked in the middle of a crowded area and he blew
himself up," said 35-year-old eye-witness Said Karim Mohammed, who had been
shopping in the popular fruit market in the Hayaniyah district of the town.
As he spoke, ambulances were ferrying the wounded to nearby hospitals.
Sunday's brutal attacks were another reminder of the violence that Iraqi
health officials say kills at least 100 people daily, and came one day after
Maliki secured a pledge from Iraqi tribal leaders to quell the fighting.
Since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra on February 22, Iraq
has been engulfed in tit-for-tat Shiite-Sunni bloodshed that has killed
thousands and pushed it to the brink of full civil war.