Baghdad bombed as US faces prospect of long war
Pastor Dale Morgan
Friday October 13, 12:51 AM
*Baghdad bombed as US faces prospect of long war*
Gunmen killed nine staff at a television studio and bomb attacks rocked
Baghdad as Pentagon officials said plans had been laid to allow US
forces to stay in Iraq until 2010 if needed.
This latest sign that the Iraqi crisis is far from over came as a gang
stormed the offices of Al-Shaabiya TV and slaughtered staff on Thursday,
including the general manager Abdul-Rahim al-Nasrawi, a minor Shiite
politician.
"We came in this morning and we saw the massacre. All were killed. We
think gunmen broke into the house and killed them," said a journalist
from the private satellite network, who asked not to be identified.
Iraqi security officials confirmed that there had been an attack on the
station's premises, a converted house in downtown Baghdad.
Nasrawi ran the little-known Justice and Democratic Progress party, and
his satellite channel has not yet started broadcasting. There was no
word from staff as to why it should have been attacked.
The government condemned the attack, with spokesman Ali Dabagh saying it
"aimed to muzzle the media" and vowing that authorities would take
greater measures to protect the safety of journalists.
Coalition spokesman Major General William Caldwell confirmed that, as US
officials predicted, there had been a "tremendous spike" in violence in
Iraq since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan two weeks ago.
"Ramadan has been a violent period," he said. "We assume it will still
get worse before its get better. We expect violence to continue to
increase over the next two weeks, until the end of Ramadan."
A coordinated pair of bomb attacks killed at least five people and
wounded 10 more in a busy square in central Baghdad, security sources said.
The blasts rattled windows a kilometre (half-a-mile) away and a plume of
dust and smoke rose from the city skyline from Tayaran Square.
One police officer was killed and three wounded in the attack, security
officials said, suggesting that the blasts had targeted security forces
working for Iraq's US-backed government.
The attackers first triggered a car bomb then detonated a roadside booby
trap in the immediate aftermath of the first blast, in a bid to maximise
casualties, security officials said.
Three more people, including another policeman, died when a
booby-trapped motorcycle exploded as officers examined it. Ten
bystanders and five police were injured, a security official said.
Meanwhile, police continued to collect the bodies of murder victims
slain in Baghdad's dirty war between rival Sunni and Shiite death
squads. A US military spokeswoman said 16 corpses had been found on
Thursday.
The military also announced the death of another US soldier. That
brought the number killed since the start of the month to 41 and since
the US-led invasion of 2003 to 2,750, according to an AFP count based on
Pentagon figures.
The US military has 142,000 soldiers deployed in Iraq, supporting the
coalition government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and battling the
Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias pushing the country towards civil war.
In Washington, army chief of staff General Peter Schoomaker confirmed
Wednesday that contingency plans were being drawn up to have enough
troops ready to maintain current force levels in Iraq until 2010.
Schoomaker said the army had scheduled troop rotations "at exactly what
we have today" through the next four years, but said the actual number
deployed will depend on conditions on the ground.
"This is not a prediction that things are going poorly or better," he
told reporters. "It's just that I have to have enough ammo in the
magazine that I can continue to shoot as long as they want us to shoot."
A few months ago US officials predicted that some of the 15 combat
brigades deployed in Iraq would be able to come home by the end of the
year, but since then mounting sectarian violence seems to have forced a
rethink.
Meanwhile, Dabagh said Iraq needs foreign troops to remain in the
country indefinitely, until its own forces are in a position to combat
the insurgency.
"We believe that the presence of the multinational force is necessary
now to prepare Iraqi forces to combat terror and improve the lives of
Iraqis," he told a press conference.
"The government considers that Iraqi security forces still need to be
trained and reinforced... The multinational force should participate in
the building of Iraqi forces," he said, without saying when that would
be achieved.