BAGHDAD, Feb. 3, 2007
Baghdad Bomb Kills 121, Wounds Hundreds
Suicide Truck Bomber Hits Iraqi Market With 1 Ton Of Explosives
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Video Report Intensifies Iraq Debate The National Intelligence Estimate released today paints a bleak picture of the situation in Iraq. The report comes amid deepening skepticism about the war on Capitol Hill. Susan Roberts has more.
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A man wounded in a bomb blast is brought to the Imam Ali hospital in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Feb. 3, 2007. (AP)
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Smoke billows from the site of an explosion in central Baghdad, where a suicide truck bomb slammed into a market in the district of Al-Sadriyah. More than a hundred people were killed and more than 200 were injured. (Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)
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A woman passes by a car destroyed in a car bomb blast in the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Feb. 3, 2007. Several car bombs struck the oil-rich Kirkuk in a two-hour span on Saturday, killing at least two people and wounding 40, police said. (AP Photo)
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The casket of Army Pfc. Ryan J. Hill, of Keizer, Ore., is carried into People's Church in Salem, Ore., for a funeral service Friday, Feb. 2, 2007. Hill died when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee in Baghdad. (AP/Statesman Journal, A.J. Wright)
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Photo Essay Shiites Mark Ashoura One of the holiest days of year for Shiites marked amid increased tensions with Sunni Muslims.
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Interactive American Heroes Profiles of U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq, a look at the war's toll and pictures of mourning.
The attacker was driving a truck carrying foodstuffs including oil and flour when he detonated a ton of explosives, destroying stores and stalls in the busy outdoor Sadriyah market, police said.
The late-afternoon explosion was the latest in a series of attacks against mainly Shiite commercial targets in the capital. No group claimed responsibility, but it appeared to be part of a bid by Sunni insurgents to provoke retaliatory violence and kill as many people as possible ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security sweep.
Many of the injured from the market blast were driven to overwhelmed hospitals in pickup trucks and angry young men lifted bodies onto stretchers. The Kindi hospital, Baghdad's main emergency facility, quickly filled had to start refusing patients, asking ambulances to take them elsewhere.
"It was a strong blow. A car exploded. I fell on the ground," said one young man with a bandaged head, his face still streaked with blood.
Police and hospital officials said at least 121 people were killed and 226 wounded. The Health Ministry put the figure at 105 killed and 331 wounded.
Maj. Gen. Jihad al-Jabiri of the Interior Ministry told state television the truck was carrying a ton of explosives and destroyed 10 buildings.
"It was a suicide attacker who entered the market at a time when it was packed with people," al-Jabiri said. "There are still bodies under the rubble."
He said checkpoints at the market's entrance failed to stop the truck and called on the government to deport foreign Arabs, saying recent attacks have been carried out by suicide bombers.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad called the bombing "horrific" and said it was "an example of what the forces of evil will do to intimidate the Iraqi people... To those who commit these heinous crimes we send this message: You will be relentlessly hunted until you are apprehended and brought to justice."
The bombing hit at a particularly inopportune time for the Bush administration's latest attempt to crush violence in the capital and just days before American and Iraqi forces were expected to start an all-out assault on Sunni and Shiite gunmen and bombers.
The blast was the deadliest attack in the capital since Nov. 23, when suspected al Qaeda in Iraq fighters attacked the capital's Sadr City Shiite slum with a series of car bombs and mortars that struck in quick succession, killing at least 215 people.
A suicide bomber also crashed his car into the Bab al-Sharqi market, near Sadriyah, on Jan. 22, killing 88 people.
South of Baghdad, a pair of suicide bombers detonated explosives Thursday among shoppers in a crowded outdoor market in the Shiite city of Hillah, killing at least 73 people and wounding 163, police said.
In other developments:
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- usadvisor101,
You sound very angry, yet quite comfortable in your ignorance. Do a little reading. - Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101
Actually I'm in Delaware, I just heard qbout the situation in MN and tracked down the details. I'm steamed that our governemnt would treat one of our own soldiers that callously.
Stay safe - Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101,
Re: "that statement was a lie about us forces training the mehdi army."
As I have already mentioned, if you are really a U.S. advisor, it is easy to see why we are being defeated so badly, on so many fronts.
You are obviously a victim of your own propaganda, and you will never be capable of any meaningful analysis until you can learn from your mistakes.
Here is the source for my story. If you can debunk any of it with anything more substantial than vacuous denial, come back and let us know.
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA11Ak03.html - Reply to this comment
- I never supported this war to begin with.
However, as recently as a month ago I thought:
- We shouldn't leave Iraq prematurely, otherwise the chaos over there would only get worse and potentially involve the whole Middle East region as opposed to just Iraq.
Now, my thoughts are:
F'CK THEM! F'CK THEM ALL!! LET THEM ALL KILL EACH OTHER OR DEFEND THEMSELVES. NO MORE AMERICANS SHOULD BE KILLED FOR THIS BS!
.
. - Reply to this comment
- ISLAM IS A VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW!
ISLAM PRACTICES SLAVERY OF NON MUSLIMMS
ISLAM PRACTICES APARTHIED OF NON MUSLIMMS
ISLAM PRACTICES RAPE OF NON MUSLIMMS
ISLAM PRACTICES GENOCIDE OF NON MUSLIMS
ALL ARE VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ARE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY - Reply to this comment
- Bush and Congress are Staying the Course!
- Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101
got to get to bed to get up to stay inside because of the cold. It's not supposed to get above freezing til maybe next weekend. I'll think about going outside then. Have a good one. Don't be a stranger on here. - Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101
At least he's done playing super general, I saw a clip where he was somewhere that required his removing his shoes. Bigass holes in the toes of both socks. Guess he's too busy robbing the bank to buy socks.
We've all got to do something about the VA hospitals. I don't know if you're aware of the marine in MN who committed suicide after begging to be admitted. He got the "we've got a waiting list speech." I've been on a rant to get people to just email their senators and congressman to get something done. Fix it and then investigate it to he11, but fix it. With the new budget request we're going to be borrowing over $5300.00 a second to spend over there. Another $100/second would give close to $8.5 million a day to fix it. That just chapped my A$$. If you aren't aware of this mess go to: http://www.startribune.com/462/story/963363.html, it's his town's paper. We owed him better.
I think you're right about the dad-son thing. Apparently he's always been the family screwup, Jeb was supposed to be the one to run in 2000, but he lost his first try in Florida, so maybe W thought he'd show 'em. His dad wasn't the brightest bulb, but he listened to people who were. Whatever went on, that family and their close friends aren't the one's losing the kids. - Reply to this comment
- The best minds available told bonzo as they had told his dad that he could expect the exact situation we are facing now if we removed Saddam, bush 41 listened. Our chimp decided he was smarter. The decider got that wrong,too. He11, he's not smarter than Barney.
As a direct result of the Commander-InCompetent's ego nearly 3,100 of our finest, brave young men and women have given their lives proving the folly of his pride. Still, he will not learn. - Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101,
Negroponte oversaw similar death-squad operations South America during the Iran/contra conspiracy, and he got away with it. Seems pretty naive to me to be so certain that he might not try this tactic in Iraq.
Thanks for the discussion.
Again, good evening. - Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101,
Re: "feelfree hate to keep schooling ya, but the source of heroin is the poppie."
Claiming that opium is the same thing as heroin is like claiming that gasoline is the same thing as crude oil.
Re: "afghanistan is ten times better than it was under the taliban."
I hope that you will understand if I don't take your word for it.
Good evening. - Reply to this comment
- "Her face of horror could not be seen so I blanked it out. No innocence. No ignorance. Just summary guilt. And death."
SearingTruth
"The blood. All of that blood. Dried and brittle and bound to her skin. To act as if I did not notice, as if I did not care. To search, to salvage, to endure, to live. To return. Broken."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com - Reply to this comment
- Sorry, not heroin, but opium.
- Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101,
Re: "i dont think antiwar protesters should be crying about poppies"
If you fail to see the significance of billions and billions of dollars of herion money being funneled to Afghan war/drug-lords, then you really don't have any business advising anyone, now do you? - Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101,
You are living in a dream land. If the Mahdi Army was 'completely crushed' in the battle of Najaf, then how were hundreds of their ranks, out of thousands, taken into custody just last week?
Furthermore, no mock-election conducted under the boot of a brutal and illegal occupation force will ever be viewed by many as having any legitimacy. Failure to recognise this is yet another reason why the U.S. will never prevail in Iraq. - Reply to this comment
- "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
George Orwell
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com - Reply to this comment
- "Which morality shall we claim?
That of magnanimous oppressor and murderer in substitute of heartless oppression and murder?"
SearingTruth
"Death. I saw only death. And a promise from evil that death would soon subside."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com - Reply to this comment
- Woops.
"directly resulting in Afghanistan recovering form negligible poppy cultivation, to the leading global supplier of the globe."
...should be, "directly resulting in Afghanistan recovering from having negligible poppy cultivation, to again being the leading global supplier of heroin."
Proofreading never hurts. - Reply to this comment
- usadvisor101
You should bear in mind that the Shia got the short end from the Sunni and Baathists for years. Given their penchant for revenge, it may just as easily have been they who started taking out discrete numbers of Sunnis even before the golden dome mess. Al malikis government has also consistently been directing the security forces against Sunnis and their rarer alQaeda allies. I'd hate to hazard a guess at which side is more responsible for the madness. As an outsider, I'd guess that both sides have been waiting for the opportunity to get at each other for years, but were restrained by Saddam. Then, in our alleged leader's wisdom, we took Saddam out, thereby inviting Iran and sectarian violence in. Unfortunately, you can't believe any of the parties involved, including our administration. They all tell whatever part of the truth suits their purposes. - Reply to this comment
- "And so death begat death, and suffering begat suffering, until all had been consumed, and all cause lost."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com - Reply to this comment
