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A Bloody Sunday in Baghdad, In Spite of The Surge
BAGHDAD - Five explosions ripped through central and southwestern Baghdad Sunday evening as families shopped for an upcoming holiday, killing at least 33 and injuring at least 111.
A grandmother of 19-year-old Mohammed Esam cries over his body at a morgue in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Iraq, Monday, Sept. 29, 2008. Mohammed was one of 22 victims in Sunday's car bombing central Baghdad. (AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani) The bombings were a bloody reminder that despite the drop in violence in Iraq over the past year the bloodshed is not gone.
In southwest Baghdad, a minivan detonated in a side street of a market where vendors were selling fruits, vegetables and second hand goods. The bombing ripped through the packed street of shoppers just before the evening meal when Muslims sit down to break their daylong fast during this month of Ramadan.
About an hour and a half later, a second parked car bomb ripped through another market place. The market was packed with people who'd fasted from dawn to dusk and following their evening meal ventured out to shop for the upcoming holiday Eid al Fitr, the holiday of feasting, that follows the month of fasting in Islam. As families fled, a second bomb hidden under a vendor's stall detonated. At least 19 people were killed and some 72 people were injured, police said.
Police later found a third vest they believed was intended for use at the same time.
Fadel Naama was inside "The Dragon" gym coaching patrons as they worked out in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada when the two explosions turned the evening into a night of bloodshed. Shortly before the explosions, a teenage boy came to him apologizing that he couldn't train on Sunday because of a pulled muscle. Naama, who owns the gym, told him to go home and rest.
Just after the boy left with his friend, Naama heard the boom and felt the pressure of an explosion. The boy's friend ran up the stairs in shock, his white T-shirt stained red.
"Where is your friend?" Fadel recalled asking. "He's been torn to pieces, the police took him," he said. He'd come up to wash the blood from his hands and legs.
Naama went outside and was stopped by police from approaching the site of the explosion, worried that another would soon go off. Then he saw a flash of light as a second explosion killed more people. He dropped to the ground to avoid shrapnel and heard metal pieces lodge into the walls around him.
Outside he saw a young girl sobbing and clinging to her father's leg as he urged her and the rest of his family to cross the street away from the explosion, he said. Next to Naama's leg was a pile of human flesh and in front of him a burning motorcycle lit up the market.
As Naama walked through the market trying to get to his car he passed bodies covered in white sheets and policemen loading up the wounded in the back of their cars.
The Iraqi Army pointed their weapons at him and searched him for explosives.
"I was angry. Only after the bombing did they become men," he said. "Only after this bombing did they start to search for bombs."
For the families of the dead, the upcoming holiday, which will begin sometime between Tuesday and Thursday, will be filled with funerals.
"The man who planted this must not be counted as a human. What kind of a heart does he have?" Naama said as he recalled the blast. "Didn't he think about the type of people he killed today? They were people shopping for Eid to celebrate. They were shopping for their families."
On Sunday night Hussein Yousef, 39, waited in Yarmouk hospital in west Baghdad. He didn't know if his cousin, wounded in the bombing in southwestern Baghdad, would make it through the night.
Yousef remembered the minivan that exploded. It was the same van that shopkeepers and vendors had seen the day before, he said. When the man tried to park they'd shooed him away. But as Yousef sold light bulbs and batteries from an outdoor stall he and the others didn't notice when the same van slipped into a side street, was parked and later detonated.
Also Sunday in Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier and injured three others including a civilian and an adhesive bomb attached to a vehicle killed one person and injured another.
In the northern province of Diyala the mayor of the town of al Saidiyah was injured along with three of his bodyguards and two civilians on Sunday in a roadside bomb. The town is about 50 miles east of Baqouba.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllThe carnage continues as America funds $68.6 billion more for more. Disgusting.
If the so-called "surge" has worked and America is "winning" in Iraq as mccain suggests, then I suggest that he and his billionaire barbie-doll wife go window shopping in downtown Baghdad without armor and helicopter support. So why not bring the troops home if the surge worked? The repugs are trying to confuse ignorant, arrogant Americans with the surge and the "war" in Iraq.
Some towns no doubt have less violence mainly due to an ethnic-cleansing civil war that has been going on since we invaded - ie - they have no more enemies to kill. But we take credit wherever we can with any decrease in violence. This story, and what little news coming out of Iraq each day, shows that violence hasn't really decreased all that much; there are just fewer embedded reporters and what few out there are controlled by their corporate handlers.
i guess you all were also fretting over every iraqi that saddam killed or tortured or gassed or raped, huh? now some foreign attacker bombs innocent people you justify their protest by blaming america and not the perp?
As of today, 4,175 Americans have been killed in Iraq. Every day, at least 30 Iraqis are killed and about 50 are wounded. This has been going on for five years with no end in sight.
Why are we still there? Why doesn't the Secretary of Defense Gates give some solutions for the present instead of harking back to how the war was mismanaged?
If this outrage is allowed to go on with no positive result for this country, it is time to really protest just as Americans are protesting the criminal bailout.
I know that writing representatives is increasingly viewed as insufficient, but setting the track and being counted in opposition is still part of the system.
Friends (Quakers) keep a permanent lobby in Washington.
http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/bases.htm
Oh petertheok, you poor baby. No I wasn't fretting over Iraqis that Saddam killed, tortured, gassed and raped except in a distant, humanist way. The philosophic distance was necessary since every hominid must preserve his sympathy gland for when he most will need it.
I understand that bleeding-heart conservatives might feel differently.
As the U.S. sanctions began to kill a million Iraqi babies from dysentery and other supply-side ailments, however, I found myself becoming more viscerally involved.
The next million Iraqis killed as a direct result of thoughtless American war engaged my emotional person even more.
But sure I blame foreign bombers if yesterday's incident was instigated by foreigners like ourselves. But I blame you, too, for not being more hip about this stuff.
no hip enough? sorry, is my tie too wide?
this is a new front, though: you now blame me for the bombing. not really sure how you get off doing that, what your motives are or your objective. you seem to have some aggression issues.
and why the "poor baby" comment? please explain. i just asked a question in order to sort out some apparent hypocritical positions.
otherwise, i'm sorry to hear that your sympathy gland is so limited. i have no such problem with mine. certainly nice to see your "emotional person" engaged, though.
The deaths caused by Saddam were only a tiny part the US fault for supporting him at times. His vile nature and brutal behavior was his own choice. Nationalizing the oil was his nation's option, and that is what we deposed and killed him for. Ironically he could have killed millions more with our full support if he just made the right oil deal. I am not convinced that we demonstrated superior morals.
As the occupier we are 100% responsible for all that goes on in Iraq. When we leave our responsibility will fade with time.
We can't fix it. We can only stop being evil.
An interesting perspective - so the sower and nurturer of the seed is not responsible for the fruit reaped?
Saddam Hussein was "our son of a bitch." OUR covert ops enabled and empowered him, for sake of OUR interests. And then we deposed him, again for sake of OUR interests. And this was largely done under cloak, with cold calculation and insidious overtures of doing God's good.
Our covert national ops were responsible for setting the stage, writing the script and performing the act. As such our nation and those transgressions will forever be responsible.
Should we-the-people ever be able to gain back our nation's will, and end the covert black ops, and truly stop sowing evil, we shall still be responsible to stay on the higher path, and to assure the seeds we have sown no longer bear bad fruit. We will forever need to remain accountable in assuring we do not again allow our hypocrisy to become rooted in the soil of endless greed and power, but instead to nurture and flourish in the soil of honor and integrity.
"The deaths caused by Saddam were only a tiny part the US fault for supporting him at times."
"A tiny part"?! How much? Do you know the full history? Read "Web of Deceit" by Barry Lando.
http://www.amazon.com/Web-Deceit-History-Complicity-Churchill/dp/1590512383
If Saddam was not a brutal pig he would not have behaved as he did. It is completely true that the US took advantage of his defects and provided him with more tools to do more damage, but HE DID IT GLADLY!
When he finally rebelled it was to get a bigger piece of the action in the oil game. He didn't tire of the murder and mayhem.
The US was only slightly responsible for the deaths ordered by Saddam, but they were responsible for cuddling up and kissing the worst dictators across the planet. Our national policies in most cases were appalling, antidemocratic, militaristic, greedy and we deserve every ounce of hate from the worlds poor.
You are disillusioned. You cannot draw some artificial separation between the US and Saddam to claim we were only "slightly responsible." You seem to understand that US covert ops have stirred up a lot of muck. You must want to believe we have "good" reason, and are acting in the name of "good." But that is pure crap - it is as it does. The outcome is the fruit reaped by what you sow. One time might be unintentional, two times a stubborn resistance to learning and knowing better, but there is no explanation for the continued and increased elevation of our transgressions other than it must be in our nature.
The US is not saving the world, we are spoiling it. Only those that will not see think differently. And, as we-the-people continue to defend and allow this, to turn a blind eye or otherwise excuse it, the world will begin to believe there is little separation between the actions of our government and its military and the will of our people.
Following are relatively short videos, and I've viewed the one for or on 'Iraq Deformities', while not having yet viewed the one about Winter Soldiers testimonies in March. The latter, however, was obtained with a link to the youtube page and the link was titled saying that the video is about (in part anyway) DU and its impact on humans, the soldiers anyway.
The 'Iraq Deformities' video shows some extreme cases and is apparently on only some cases in Fallujah; therefore, we need to consider that this is happening in other areas of Iraq, plenty of them, I presume. I'll have to re-view the video again, for I'm not sure if there's mention or much on DU being cause, but part says it's believed that the USA's use of white phosphorous in Fallujah is the or a cause of the deformities occuring there. I wonder about the WP being able to cause this, not recalling having ever read of this before, as cause. But DU has been very much reported to produce ['extreme defomities'], with some websites providing photos of horrible deformations.
I just came across the video this week, so figure to post the link for readers who'll see this post and haven't yet seen this important video.
'Iraq Deformities',
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=diNO0in4m_M
'Winter Soldier on Depleted Uranium',
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVfvB95YYNY