Baghdad bombs kill 11 as Iraq violence surges
CBS/AP
BAGHDAD - Two separate car bombs exploded in a Shiite district in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday, police officials said, killing 11 people as violence surges in Iraq amid an escalating political crisis a month after the U.S. military withdrawal.
A wave of bombing attacks has killed at least 170 people since the beginning of the year, many of whom were Shiite pilgrims attending religious commemorations. The last American soldiers left the country Dec. 18.
Suspected Sunni insurgents have frequently targeted Shiite communities and Iraqi security forces to undermine public confidence in the Shiite-dominated government and its efforts to protect people.
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Tuesday's first attack targeted an early morning gathering of day laborers in Baghdad's Sadr City. Police said eight were killed and another 21 wounded. Minutes later, an explosives-packed car blew up near a pastry shop in the same district, killing three civilians and wounding 26 others, police said.
Hospital officials Baghdad confirmed the death toll. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
While insurgents have carried out a number of deadly attacks in recent years, there is little indication yet that the country is slipping back towards the widespread sectarian bloodshed of 2006 and 2007.
Nonetheless, these recent attacks are seen as particularly dangerous because they coincide with both the departure of U.S. troops, as well as a political crisis pitting Shiite officials against the largest Sunni-backed bloc.
The political battle erupted last month after the Shiite-led government issued an arrest warrant against the Sunni vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi, on terrorism charges, sending him into virtual exile in the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. In protest, al-Hashemi's Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc has been boycotting parliament and Cabinet sessions, bringing government work to a standstill.
Sunnis fear that without the American presence as a last-resort guarantor of a sectarian balance, the Shiite government will try to pick off their leaders one by one, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tries to cement his own grip on power.
Last week, the leader of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, Ayad Allawi, accused al-Maliki of unfairly targeting Sunni officials and deliberately triggering a political crisis that is tearing Iraq apart. Allawi, who is a Shiite, said Iraq needs a new prime minister or new elections to prevent the country from disintegrating along sectarian lines.
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Also, I just heard on the radio today that extremists in Egypt are blaming the decrease in tourism on Israel putting sharks off of their beaches so people will be afraid to go in the water! Of course it had nothing to do with all of the violence in Cairo. And what about the way Egypt treats the Copts? The whole Islamic world should go away - then maybe the rest of us could live in peace and harmony
Also, I just heard on the radio today that extremists in Egypt are blaming the decrease in tourism on Israel putting sharks off of their beaches so people will be afraid to go in the water! Of course it had nothing to do with all of the violence in Cairo. And what about the way Egypt treats the Copts? The whole Islamic world should go away - then maybe the rest of us could live in peace and harmony
Too bad about the violence. The United States paid a horrible price for helping people who hated us - the only return was US troops in body bags.
Now they can live with it.
We need to bring our troops home, concern ourselves with our domestic issues, and stay out of foreign countries respective business. I'm not a big Ron Paul fan in general; however, Dr Paul is absolutely correct about the requirement for the US to stop being the world's policeman.
Let the Arab Nation deal with its own problems.
Obama needed those US troops in Iraq to fight his own war against those part-time goatherders in an geo-politically, landlocked, insignificant backwater like Afghanistan.
So you think that we should continue the Bush policy of "ignore those that attacked us" and continue letting troops die in a country that had/has nothing to do with us?
Look at other parts of the planet where diversity causes so many problems.
The politically correct mob tout diversity within the USA but where is the push for unifying bonds as urged in the past?
Our day (in the USA) is inevitable.
A house divided can not stand.
I believe it is a part of the ongoing class war in the USA.
"There's class warfare, all right, Mr. (Warren) Buffett said, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning"
There has been class warfare going on," Buffett, 81, said in a Sept. 30 interview with Charlie Rose on PBS. It's just that my class is winning. And my class isn't just winning, I mean we're killing them."
"My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress." - Billionaire Warren Buffett, in a New York Times op-ed on Aug. 15.