Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
February 12, 2008 By Ian Fisher
BAGHDAD — Two car bombs exploded here in the capital on Monday, killing at least 11 people in what appeared to be a coordinated attack on a leader of the citizens groups that have turned against Sunni insurgents, Iraqi officials said.
The blasts, within a few hundred yards of each other, erupted around noon in the largely quiet and religiously mixed neighborhood of Karada, just before the American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, left Iraq after an overnight visit.
There was no indication that the bombs were meant to send any message to him, but seemed rather another attack on the so-called Awakening groups, mostly Sunni tribesmen now allied with American and Iraqi forces to defeat Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown insurgent group that American authorities say is led by foreigners.
On Sunday night, at least 23 people were killed by a suicide bomber north of Baghdad at a checkpoint staffed by members of the local citizens group. Some reports put the number of dead in that attack at 33, amid some 50 reportedly killed around Iraq on Sunday.
On Monday, the first of the two car bombs — relatively rare in the capital in recent months because of the increased American military presence — was packed into a blue minibus that suddenly entered a parking lot near the compound of Sheik Ali Hatem, a top leader of the large Dulaimi tribe and a major force behind the citizens groups.
An Iraqi soldier, Abbas Mwoali, 28, said he and two other soldiers there began firing at the driver as he barreled through the lot.
“As soon we started shooting, he blew up,” Mr. Mwoali said.
The blast was so powerful that it stacked up half a dozen cars into a charred pile, the melted wheels of one suspended some seven feet above the ground.
Mr. Mwoali said no one was killed there, though his two fellow soldiers were slightly injured; according to reports, so too was the tribal leader, Mr. Hatem, who has spoken out often against the insurgents in recent months.
A few minutes later, several hundred yards away, a black Volkswagen Golf exploded, apparently set off by remote control, at a busy intersection crowded with shoppers and shopkeepers looking in the direction of the first blast. Thamer Adeel, 38, who had just left the appliance store where he works, said he was thrown to the sidewalk.
“I got up and started picking up the people who had fallen on the ground,” he said. “We went into the shop to pick up the man who was dead.”
That man was Ghazi Mohammad, the 58-year-old owner of an antique shop and father of five. His son, Mustafah, 17, said his father had managed to stagger a few feet through his shop, strewn with carpets and plaster from the shattered ornate ceiling, before collapsing.
In Baghdad, two other bombs set on the roadside exploded, killing one person and injuring two others.
In the northern city of Mosul, joint patrols of Iraqi and American soldiers continued a recent operation against one of the last urban strongholds of the insurgency. In firefights in the western section of the city, an Iraqi soldier and four insurgents were reported killed Monday, the day after 13 others died in fighting in the area, among them four children and five Awakening members. Power cuts were reported after a car bomb hit an electrical station on Sunday.
The United States military has said it is not mounting any major operation in Mosul, but rather a series of smaller raids to clear various neighborhoods of insurgents. Meanwhile, some Iraqi soldiers have said their efforts are being hampered by a lack of equipment from the central government.
“It’s been more than four years, and the Defense Ministry had not supplied us with even a single bullet,” Brig. Gen. Nuradin Hussein Herchi, commander of the Fourth Brigade, Second Battalion in Mosul, said in a recent interview.
“We have 55 military vehicles, 15 of them broken due to attacks by I.E.D.’s,” he added, referring to homemade bombs set by insurgents. “Another 10 are not working and need to be repaired. Now we do not have enough transportation to transfer our soldiers to the disputed area, so how can we send troops to all places to fight Al Qaeda?”
The United States military reported that an American soldier was killed Sunday in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, by a roadside bomb. At least 3,960 American soldiers have died in Iraq since March 2003.
An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Mosul.
February 12, 2008 By Ian Fisher
BAGHDAD — Two car bombs exploded here in the capital on Monday, killing at least 11 people in what appeared to be a coordinated attack on a leader of the citizens groups that have turned against Sunni insurgents, Iraqi officials said.
The blasts, within a few hundred yards of each other, erupted around noon in the largely quiet and religiously mixed neighborhood of Karada, just before the American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, left Iraq after an overnight visit.
There was no indication that the bombs were meant to send any message to him, but seemed rather another attack on the so-called Awakening groups, mostly Sunni tribesmen now allied with American and Iraqi forces to defeat Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown insurgent group that American authorities say is led by foreigners.
On Sunday night, at least 23 people were killed by a suicide bomber north of Baghdad at a checkpoint staffed by members of the local citizens group. Some reports put the number of dead in that attack at 33, amid some 50 reportedly killed around Iraq on Sunday.
On Monday, the first of the two car bombs — relatively rare in the capital in recent months because of the increased American military presence — was packed into a blue minibus that suddenly entered a parking lot near the compound of Sheik Ali Hatem, a top leader of the large Dulaimi tribe and a major force behind the citizens groups.
An Iraqi soldier, Abbas Mwoali, 28, said he and two other soldiers there began firing at the driver as he barreled through the lot.
“As soon we started shooting, he blew up,” Mr. Mwoali said.
The blast was so powerful that it stacked up half a dozen cars into a charred pile, the melted wheels of one suspended some seven feet above the ground.
Mr. Mwoali said no one was killed there, though his two fellow soldiers were slightly injured; according to reports, so too was the tribal leader, Mr. Hatem, who has spoken out often against the insurgents in recent months.
A few minutes later, several hundred yards away, a black Volkswagen Golf exploded, apparently set off by remote control, at a busy intersection crowded with shoppers and shopkeepers looking in the direction of the first blast. Thamer Adeel, 38, who had just left the appliance store where he works, said he was thrown to the sidewalk.
“I got up and started picking up the people who had fallen on the ground,” he said. “We went into the shop to pick up the man who was dead.”
That man was Ghazi Mohammad, the 58-year-old owner of an antique shop and father of five. His son, Mustafah, 17, said his father had managed to stagger a few feet through his shop, strewn with carpets and plaster from the shattered ornate ceiling, before collapsing.
In Baghdad, two other bombs set on the roadside exploded, killing one person and injuring two others.
In the northern city of Mosul, joint patrols of Iraqi and American soldiers continued a recent operation against one of the last urban strongholds of the insurgency. In firefights in the western section of the city, an Iraqi soldier and four insurgents were reported killed Monday, the day after 13 others died in fighting in the area, among them four children and five Awakening members. Power cuts were reported after a car bomb hit an electrical station on Sunday.
The United States military has said it is not mounting any major operation in Mosul, but rather a series of smaller raids to clear various neighborhoods of insurgents. Meanwhile, some Iraqi soldiers have said their efforts are being hampered by a lack of equipment from the central government.
“It’s been more than four years, and the Defense Ministry had not supplied us with even a single bullet,” Brig. Gen. Nuradin Hussein Herchi, commander of the Fourth Brigade, Second Battalion in Mosul, said in a recent interview.
“We have 55 military vehicles, 15 of them broken due to attacks by I.E.D.’s,” he added, referring to homemade bombs set by insurgents. “Another 10 are not working and need to be repaired. Now we do not have enough transportation to transfer our soldiers to the disputed area, so how can we send troops to all places to fight Al Qaeda?”
The United States military reported that an American soldier was killed Sunday in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, by a roadside bomb. At least 3,960 American soldiers have died in Iraq since March 2003.
An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Mosul.