Attacks kill 24 in Baghdad despite security crackdown
Pastor Dale Morgan
Tuesday August 8, 9:40 PM
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Attacks kill 24 in Baghdad despite security crackdown*
Bombings and shooting have killed at least 24 people and wounded 80 in
Baghdad, as a previous raid by US and Iraqi troops into a Shiite militia
stronghold stirred political controversy.
At least five bomb blasts killed a total of 19 people, two rockets fell
inside the highly fortified Green Zone and five Iraqis were killed in a
bank robbery, security officials said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said he had not authorised what
he called Sunday's "unjustified" nighttime assault by Iraqi troops and
US advisers on a target in the impoverished east Baghdad suburb of Sadr
City.
The raid, which the defence ministry and US-led coalition said had
targeted a death squad, triggered a clash with Shiite gunmen loyal to
radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose movement is part of Maliki's
coalition.
Coalition aircraft were called into action after the Iraqi army snatch
squad came under fire, and at least three civilians were killed.
Speaking on state television, Maliki said such raids "should not happen
again in order to protect the reconciliation process.
"I reiterate my rejection to such an operation and it should not be
executed without my consent. This particular operation did not have my
approval."
Maliki's anger underlined the delicate political situation in Baghdad,
where the army is trying to combat sectarian death squads without being
drawn into war with the militias, some of which are linked to parties in
government.
Any sign of a rift between US forces and the prime minister will raise
concerns as the allies relauch a joint operation to pacify the capital.
The first bomb hit at dawn, when a roadside booby-trap ripped open a
minibus and a taxi in the downtown Nahda area. Nine commuters were
killed and eight wounded, an interior ministry official said.
Almost immediately afterwards, two more blasts targeted a police patrol
nearby, wounding three officers, he added.
Four hours later, two bombs detonated in rapid succession in the crowded
Shorjah market in the commercial heart of the city.
Ten people were killed and 69 wounded in the blasts, which set fire to
several shops. Five days ago 10 people were killed in Shorjah when an
explosives-laden moped detonated.
The bombings are a challenge to Maliki's efforts to regain control of
Baghdad and halt what many see as Iraq's slide towards civil war.
His two-month-old Operation Forward Together has so far made little
impact on the daily toll of bombings and death squad killings, and more
military reinforcements are being sent to the city.
Maliki's US allies have also responded to the threat. More than 10,000
coalition troops are now supporting the operation, following the arrival
at the weekend of the 3,700-strong 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.
"The situation in Baghdad is very difficult right now," the US commander
in Iraq, General George Casey, said Tuesday in an interview with ABC
television.
"And we are working very closely with the new Iraqi government to
improve the plan we had in place, to bring security in Baghdad," he said.
Casey said Iraq was still a long way from all-out civil war but "the
levels of sectarian violence in Baghdad in the last probably six weeks
are higher than they've ever been."
He said additional US and Iraqi troops are to be deployed to flashpoint
mixed districts of the city, where violence between Sunnis and Shiites
is at its worst.
Tuesday's bombings, which are likely to be blamed on Sunni extremists
attacking Baghdad's Shiite majority, can be expected to feed the cycle
of revenge attacks by Shiite death squads.
Such killings leave around a dozen tortured corpses in the streets and
waterways of Baghdad every day. According to the United Nations, nearly
6,000 Iraqis were killed in May and June alone, mostly in Baghdad.
Five more Baghdadis were killed in a robbery, when gunmen stormed the
Al-Rasheed Bank in north central Baghdad, the official said.
The gang killed three guards and two bank employees, then escaped with
seven million dinars (less than 5,000 dollars).
Elsewhere, a doctor at a hospital morgue in Kut, 175 kilometres (110
miles) southeast of Baghdad, said he had received the bullet-riddled
corpses of seven Iraqi border guards found in Kharqush, a village on the
Iranian border.
In Tikrit, one policeman was killed and three others wounded when their
patrol struck a bomb, police said.
And gunmen ambushed a group of Iraqi mine disposal experts in the
northern town of Kolajo, triggering a firefight with their armed escorts
that left one of the attackers dead, a local official said.