Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
February 26, 2008
Pg. 10
By Solomon Moore
BAGHDAD — Another attack on Shiite pilgrims marching to the holy city of Karbala killed at least four people on Monday, just a day after a suicide bombing left 52 dead.
In the latest attack, two car bombs exploded in the Karada district of southeast Baghdad, killing four people and wounding at least nine, according to Iraqi and American officials.
The blasts were the third attack on Shiite pilgrims observing Arbaeen, which commemorates the end of the 40-day mourning period for the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and one of Shiite Islam’s most revered holy men.
At least 57 pilgrims have been killed during two days of attacks and more than 100 have been wounded.
“We condemn this atrocity against innocent Iraqi citizens who were exercising their right to participate in a religious commemoration,” said Col. Allen Batschelet, the chief of staff at Multinational Division Baghdad.
In the remote mountains of northern Iraq on Monday, Turkey’s military battled fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K., for a fourth day, attacking Kurdish hide-outs with fighter jets and ground artillery.
The fighting brought the death toll to 17 Turkish soldiers and as many as 153 Kurdish fighters, the Turkish military said, though the P.K.K. has reported far lower numbers of its own deaths.
Farther south, neither the continuing violence nor the rainstorms that swept over central Iraq on Monday stopped the thousands of Shiite pilgrims walking along highways, bearing red, green and black banners to the Shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala for the Arbaeen observance.
Iraqi security officials announced new measures to safeguard the pilgrims, and the minister of state for national security, Shirwan al-Waeli, was investigating the circumstances of Sunday’s bombing in Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad.
Aqeel al-Khazaaly, the governor of Karbala, estimated that five million pilgrims had traveled to the city by Monday and said he expected more than nine million by the time the commemoration ends Thursday. Maj. Gen. Ali Ghedan of the Iraqi Army said he had deployed additional soldiers to reinforce security along roads leading to Karbala.
Meanwhile, the Babel provincial police chief reassigned the Iskandariya police chief and staged joint raids with American officials in neighborhoods near the attack.
In a police station in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a wheelchair killed a police general and wounded two other people, according to Iraqi police officials.
Violence also swept through Diyala Province, just north of Baghdad. Gunmen killed an Iraqi man in a garage in Baquba and a woman in a residential area on the city’s southern outskirts. In Balad Ruz, about 15 miles west of Baquba, an improvised bomb detonated near an Iraqi security official’s house, wounding two people.
Elsewhere in Diyala Province, American forces in Khan Bani Sad killed a suspected insurgent during a raid.
In the northern city of Mosul, American military officials announced Monday that insurgents had fired on a military convoy on Sunday, killing an Iraqi boy who was playing in the street nearby.
In Baghdad, American troops detained Hafidh al-Beshara, the news editor of a prominent Shiite-run television station, and his son in a Friday night raid aimed at disrupting Iranian-backed militia groups, The Associated Press reported Monday. Troops had sought the son in the raid, but Mr. Beshara was detained as well after an unauthorized machine gun was found on the premises, the report said.
Turkish officials have withheld precise figures for the number of soldiers involved in the Turkish military’s ground operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. But Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, Nabi Sensoy, said the figure initially cited by the Turkish news media — 10,000 troops — had been “very exaggerated.”
The ambassador said in a telephone interview: “This operation will be limited in size, scope and duration. It has one target and one target alone and that is P.K.K. terrorist organization.”
Beyond that, a ghoulish video showing the executions of 12 Nepalese contract workers surfaced on jihadist Web sites on Monday. The men had been kidnapped in 2004, and their abduction highlighted the peril faced by tens of thousands of so-called “third-country nationals” working in Iraq, many of them from impoverished nations, working for little pay and few benefits.
The video shows insurgents decapitating a man and shooting others.
Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, Hilla, Karbala, Samarra and Diyala.
February 26, 2008
Pg. 10
By Solomon Moore
BAGHDAD — Another attack on Shiite pilgrims marching to the holy city of Karbala killed at least four people on Monday, just a day after a suicide bombing left 52 dead.
In the latest attack, two car bombs exploded in the Karada district of southeast Baghdad, killing four people and wounding at least nine, according to Iraqi and American officials.
The blasts were the third attack on Shiite pilgrims observing Arbaeen, which commemorates the end of the 40-day mourning period for the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and one of Shiite Islam’s most revered holy men.
At least 57 pilgrims have been killed during two days of attacks and more than 100 have been wounded.
“We condemn this atrocity against innocent Iraqi citizens who were exercising their right to participate in a religious commemoration,” said Col. Allen Batschelet, the chief of staff at Multinational Division Baghdad.
In the remote mountains of northern Iraq on Monday, Turkey’s military battled fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K., for a fourth day, attacking Kurdish hide-outs with fighter jets and ground artillery.
The fighting brought the death toll to 17 Turkish soldiers and as many as 153 Kurdish fighters, the Turkish military said, though the P.K.K. has reported far lower numbers of its own deaths.
Farther south, neither the continuing violence nor the rainstorms that swept over central Iraq on Monday stopped the thousands of Shiite pilgrims walking along highways, bearing red, green and black banners to the Shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala for the Arbaeen observance.
Iraqi security officials announced new measures to safeguard the pilgrims, and the minister of state for national security, Shirwan al-Waeli, was investigating the circumstances of Sunday’s bombing in Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad.
Aqeel al-Khazaaly, the governor of Karbala, estimated that five million pilgrims had traveled to the city by Monday and said he expected more than nine million by the time the commemoration ends Thursday. Maj. Gen. Ali Ghedan of the Iraqi Army said he had deployed additional soldiers to reinforce security along roads leading to Karbala.
Meanwhile, the Babel provincial police chief reassigned the Iskandariya police chief and staged joint raids with American officials in neighborhoods near the attack.
In a police station in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a wheelchair killed a police general and wounded two other people, according to Iraqi police officials.
Violence also swept through Diyala Province, just north of Baghdad. Gunmen killed an Iraqi man in a garage in Baquba and a woman in a residential area on the city’s southern outskirts. In Balad Ruz, about 15 miles west of Baquba, an improvised bomb detonated near an Iraqi security official’s house, wounding two people.
Elsewhere in Diyala Province, American forces in Khan Bani Sad killed a suspected insurgent during a raid.
In the northern city of Mosul, American military officials announced Monday that insurgents had fired on a military convoy on Sunday, killing an Iraqi boy who was playing in the street nearby.
In Baghdad, American troops detained Hafidh al-Beshara, the news editor of a prominent Shiite-run television station, and his son in a Friday night raid aimed at disrupting Iranian-backed militia groups, The Associated Press reported Monday. Troops had sought the son in the raid, but Mr. Beshara was detained as well after an unauthorized machine gun was found on the premises, the report said.
Turkish officials have withheld precise figures for the number of soldiers involved in the Turkish military’s ground operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. But Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, Nabi Sensoy, said the figure initially cited by the Turkish news media — 10,000 troops — had been “very exaggerated.”
The ambassador said in a telephone interview: “This operation will be limited in size, scope and duration. It has one target and one target alone and that is P.K.K. terrorist organization.”
Beyond that, a ghoulish video showing the executions of 12 Nepalese contract workers surfaced on jihadist Web sites on Monday. The men had been kidnapped in 2004, and their abduction highlighted the peril faced by tens of thousands of so-called “third-country nationals” working in Iraq, many of them from impoverished nations, working for little pay and few benefits.
The video shows insurgents decapitating a man and shooting others.
Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, Hilla, Karbala, Samarra and Diyala.