Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
June 19, 2008 By Andrew E. Kramer
BAGHDAD — The American military on Wednesday blamed a Shiite militia leader for detonating a car bomb that killed 63 people in a Shiite district a day earlier, saying he had intended to set off sectarian violence against Sunnis returning to the area as security improved.
Shiite militias drove Sunni residents from the area 18 months ago, when Baghdad was gripped in a cycle of revenge killings that ultimately divided the city between the sects. Enraged residents had blamed either American soldiers, who had been nearby, or Sunni insurgents from Al Deel, the bordering Sunni district. But the United States military blamed Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi, and identified him as a leader of the Iranian-linked Shiite fighters known as special groups.
“We believe he ordered the attack to incite Shiite violence against Sunnis,” Lt. Col. Steven Stover, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, said by e-mail. He said the military had corroborated its information from more than one source. “He’s an all-around bad guy.”
Perhaps to quell potential sectarian vendettas, the American military sent a convoy of Humvees with loudspeakers on their roofs to the area on Wednesday. The convoy traveled slowly down one street around noon, blaring a recorded message in Arabic: “The criminal Haydar Mehdi has committed the bombing. He does not care about your life.”
The convoy stopped at an intersection for a funeral procession of young men carrying a coffin, then resumed its crawl.
Residents and some Shiite politicians were skeptical. Interviewed as the convoy passed, a man who identified himself only as Abu Gaith, or the father of Gaith, scoffed at the message.
“Nobody will believe them,” he said. “They are the occupiers. It is propaganda.”
An Iraqi government statement avoided placing blame, saying only, “This crime will not influence our determination and resolve to defeat the terrorists.”
A spokesman for the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr rejected the American version as “completely away from reality.”
Jabir Habeeb Jabir, a mainstream Shiite lawmaker, also questioned the assertion that a Shiite had killed Shiites to provoke revenge killings against Sunnis. “We never heard of such actions,” he said.
The car bomb, the most deadly in Baghdad since March, detonated near a group standing on the street drinking tea to celebrate a Shiite holiday, witnesses said. Azhar Sadiq, a survivor, said she had taken her 3-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son to the shopping district because the children had few opportunities to leave the house. She had stopped to drink tea for the celebration when the bomb exploded.
“I hugged my two kids, and my body was full of shrapnel,” she said in an interview at the Kadhimiya Teaching Hospital. “I only realized that in the hospital, because I was focusing on my kids.”
In Kirkuk, in the north, a roadside bomb killed a policeman and wounded three civilians on Wednesday. Farther north in Mosul, a car bomb wounded eight people. Police in Kut, south of Baghdad, seized what they said were 27 Iranian-made improvised explosive devices.
Mohamed Hussein and Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting.
June 19, 2008 By Andrew E. Kramer
BAGHDAD — The American military on Wednesday blamed a Shiite militia leader for detonating a car bomb that killed 63 people in a Shiite district a day earlier, saying he had intended to set off sectarian violence against Sunnis returning to the area as security improved.
Shiite militias drove Sunni residents from the area 18 months ago, when Baghdad was gripped in a cycle of revenge killings that ultimately divided the city between the sects. Enraged residents had blamed either American soldiers, who had been nearby, or Sunni insurgents from Al Deel, the bordering Sunni district. But the United States military blamed Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi, and identified him as a leader of the Iranian-linked Shiite fighters known as special groups.
“We believe he ordered the attack to incite Shiite violence against Sunnis,” Lt. Col. Steven Stover, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, said by e-mail. He said the military had corroborated its information from more than one source. “He’s an all-around bad guy.”
Perhaps to quell potential sectarian vendettas, the American military sent a convoy of Humvees with loudspeakers on their roofs to the area on Wednesday. The convoy traveled slowly down one street around noon, blaring a recorded message in Arabic: “The criminal Haydar Mehdi has committed the bombing. He does not care about your life.”
The convoy stopped at an intersection for a funeral procession of young men carrying a coffin, then resumed its crawl.
Residents and some Shiite politicians were skeptical. Interviewed as the convoy passed, a man who identified himself only as Abu Gaith, or the father of Gaith, scoffed at the message.
“Nobody will believe them,” he said. “They are the occupiers. It is propaganda.”
An Iraqi government statement avoided placing blame, saying only, “This crime will not influence our determination and resolve to defeat the terrorists.”
A spokesman for the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr rejected the American version as “completely away from reality.”
Jabir Habeeb Jabir, a mainstream Shiite lawmaker, also questioned the assertion that a Shiite had killed Shiites to provoke revenge killings against Sunnis. “We never heard of such actions,” he said.
The car bomb, the most deadly in Baghdad since March, detonated near a group standing on the street drinking tea to celebrate a Shiite holiday, witnesses said. Azhar Sadiq, a survivor, said she had taken her 3-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son to the shopping district because the children had few opportunities to leave the house. She had stopped to drink tea for the celebration when the bomb exploded.
“I hugged my two kids, and my body was full of shrapnel,” she said in an interview at the Kadhimiya Teaching Hospital. “I only realized that in the hospital, because I was focusing on my kids.”
In Kirkuk, in the north, a roadside bomb killed a policeman and wounded three civilians on Wednesday. Farther north in Mosul, a car bomb wounded eight people. Police in Kut, south of Baghdad, seized what they said were 27 Iranian-made improvised explosive devices.
Mohamed Hussein and Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting.