Nearly 90 Killed In Attacks Across Iraq

Business Insider
Ahmed Rasheed

At least 89 people were killed in bomb and gun attacks in Iraq on Monday after 20 died in blasts the previous day in a coordinated surge of violence against mostly Shi'ite Muslim targets.

The bloodshed coincided with an intensifying of the conflict in neighboring Syria.

As well as the dozens of deaths at least 223 people were wounded in bomb attacks in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad, the Shi'ite town of Taji to the north, the mixed northern city of Kirkuk and elsewhere, hospital and police sources said, making it one of Iraq's bloodiest days in weeks.

No group has claimed responsibility for the latest wave of assaults but a senior Iraqi security official blamed the local wing of al Qaeda, made up of Sunni Muslim militants hostile to the Shi'ite-led government, which is friendly with Iran.

"Recent attacks are a clear message that al Qaeda in Iraq is determined to spark a bloody sectarian war," the official said, asking not to be named.

"With what's going on in Syria, these attacks should be taken seriously as a potential threat to our country. Al Qaeda is trying to push Iraq to the verge of Shi'ite-Sunni war," he said. "They want things to be as bad as in Syria."

The last two days of bombings and shootings shattered a two-week lull in violence in the run-up to the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, which started in Iraq on Saturday.

Sectarian slaughter peaked in 2006-2007 but deadly attacks have persisted while political tensions among Iraq's main Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish factions have mounted since U.S. troops left the country in December.

TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION

In Taji, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, six explosions, including a car bomb, went off near a housing complex. A seventh blast there caused carnage among police who had arrived at the scene of the earlier ones. In all 32 people were killed, including 14 police, and 48 wounded, 10 of them police.

Two car bombs struck near a government building in Sadr City, a vast, poor Shi'ite swathe of Baghdad, and in the mainly Shi'ite area of Hussainiya on the outskirts of the capital, killing a total of 11 people and wounding 73, police said.

In Kirkuk, five car bombs killed six people and wounded 17, while explosions and gun attacks on security checkpoints around the restive province of Diyala killed six people, including four soldiers and policemen, and wounded 30, police sources said.

Two car bombs parked near a military checkpoint killed five people and wounded 22 in the town of Khan Bani Saad, 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police sources said. Gunmen killed four soldiers and wounded five in an attack on a checkpoint in the town of Udhaim, 90 km north of the capital, they said.

The orchestrated spate of attacks followed car bombs on Sunday in two towns south of Baghdad and in the Shi'ite shrine city of Najaf that killed 20 people and wounded 80.

Last month was one of the bloodiest since the U.S. withdrawal, with at least 237 people killed and 603 wounded.

Iraq, whose huge desert province of Anbar, a Sunni heartland, borders Syria, is nervous about the impact of the conflict raging in its neighbor, scene of a Sunni-led revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite-dominated rule.

Iraqi teenagers stoned to death for "emo" haircuts

Uruknet

Iraqi activists said this picture belongs to a teenager who was brutally killed by religious police for having an "emo" hairstyle. (Courtesy of Al Tahreer News)

March 9, 2012

At least 90 Iraqi teenagers with "emo" appearances have been stoned to death by religious extremists in Baghdad in the past month after an inflammatory interior ministry statement dubbed it "devil worshiping", activists said.

Iraq's Moral Police released a chilling statement on the interior ministry's website condemning the "emo phenomenon" among Iraqi youth, disturbingly declaring its intent to "eliminate" the trend.

"The 'Emo phenomenon' or devil worshiping is being followed by the Moral Police who have the approval to eliminate [the phenomenon] as soon as possible since it's detrimentally affecting the society and becoming a danger," the statement read.

"They wear strange, tight clothes that have pictures on them such as skulls and use stationary that are shaped as skulls. They also wear rings on their noses and tongues, and do other strange activities," it continued.

Religious extremists caught onto the interior ministry statement, and have been harassing and killing teenagers with "strange" or "emo" appearances.

A group of armed men dressed in civilian clothing led dozens of teenagers to secluded areas a few days ago, stoned them to death, and then disposed their bodies in garbage dumpsters across the capital, according to activists.

The armed men are said to belong to "one of the most extremist religious groups" in Iraq.

"First they throw concrete blocks at the boy's arms, then at his legs, then the final blow is to his head, and if he is not dead then, they start all over again," one person who managed to escape told Al-Akhbar.

Iraq attacks kill 60, raise sectarian fears

Editor's Note:  Notice the generic label, "Al Qaeda"

Reuters

(Reuters) - Simultaneous early morning attacks on mostly Shi'ite targets across Iraq killed at least 60 people and wounded dozens on Thursday in one of the bloodiest days of violence since U.S. troops pulled out in mid-December.

The attacks that appeared to pitch al Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim insurgents against Shi'ites raised fears of a return to the widespread sectarian carnage that tore Iraq apart and cost thousands of lives in 2006 and 2007.

The violence breaks weeks of relative calm as Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Sunni leaders have sought to resolve a political crisis that threatened to unravel their power-sharing agreement following the U.S. withdrawal.

At least 32 people were killed in blasts in Baghdad where 10 explosions tore through mainly Shi'ite neighbourhoods during rush hour and other attacks targeted police patrols, commuters and crowds gathered in shopping areas.

"We were sitting at a restaurant having soup for breakfast when the bomb exploded. I lost consciousness and then saw smoke and dust when I came to. I saw people and body parts everywhere," police officer Ahmed Kadhim told Reuters.

Kadhim suffered shrapnel wounds to his left leg and back when a car bomb exploded near a restaurant killing six people and wounding 18 in Baghdad's northern Kadhimiya district.
The interior ministry blamed al Qaeda and affiliated armed groups for the attacks it said were an attempt to show that Iraq's security situation remained unstable.

The blasts hit just weeks before Baghdad plans to host an Arab League summit, which has been postponed because of regional turmoil and acrimony between Iraq's Shi'ite-led government and some Sunni Gulf states.

Holding a successful summit at the end of March would help Iraq restore its place in the Arab World since the U.S. withdrawal and help allay Sunni Gulf States worries over Iran's influence over Iraq's Shi'ite government.

"The attacks aimed to spark sectarian strife among the Iraqi people, and to prevent the Arab League meeting from being held," Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi said.

DOZENS OF BLASTS

More than a dozen blasts and attacks hit other cities across Iraq from Mosul in the north to Hilla, south of Baghdad, many of them targeting police.

The violence was aimed at Shi'ite neighbourhoods but also against security forces, a frequent target of Sunni insurgents. Iraqi officials had predicted such groups would try to stir sectarian tensions with attacks after American forces went home.

While violence has ebbed since the height of the war, Sunni insurgents affiliated to al Qaeda are still capable of large-scale assaults. Some rival Shi'ite militias have said they will cease fighting since the U.S. withdrawal.

Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group for al Qaeda-linked insurgents in Iraq, has claimed responsibility for recent large attacks on the capital, including a December 22 wave of bombings that killed at least 71 people.

In Thursday's violence, one car bomb in the capital killed at least nine people and wounded 27 in the upmarket Karrada neighbourhood, hurling shrapnel into the next street and blowing out glass from nearby buildings.

Witnesses saw at four wrecked cars full of shrapnel and bloodied seats near an ice-cream shop at the site of another blast.

In at least three Shi'ite neighbourhoods in Baghdad, nine policemen were killed, and in the capital's northwestern Kadhimiya district, a car bomb killed six people when it struck a street lined with restaurants.

In the biggest attack outside the capital, a car bomb killed seven people and wounded 33 in the town of Balad, north of Baghdad.

Iraq's political crisis erupted after Maliki moved against two senior members of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya political bloc shortly after the U.S. troop withdrawal in December, prompting a walkout by Iraqiya lawmakers that lasted until late January.

Tensions eased as Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish blocs tried to negotiate an end to the crisis. But a week ago a panel of judges detailed 150 attacks they said were carried out by death squads under Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi's command. Maliki sought Hashemi's arrest in December.

Hashemi, who has taken refuge in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, has denied accusations made against him, dismissing them as part of a plot to destroy Maliki's opponents.

The crisis was followed by a wave of attacks in December and January on Shi'ite neighbourhoods, including a suicide bombing on a Shi'ite funeral procession that killed 31 in Baghdad and an attack on Shi'ite pilgrims that left 53 dead in Basra.

Violence had ebbed until Sunday when a suicide car bomber killed 19 people in an attack on a Baghdad police academy.

(Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Francois Murphy; Editing by Patrick Markey and Giles Elgood)

US threatens to act unilaterally against Iran

Emirates 24/7

Leon Panetta getting the "lowdown" from
military personnel in Iraq

The United States is concerned about Iran providing weapons to Iraq militants and will take unilateral action when needed to deal with the threat, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday.

US officials have blamed Shi'ite militias armed by Iraq's Shi'ite neighbour Iran for most of the recent attacks on US forces in Iraq. Fourteen US service members were killed in hostile incidents in June, the highest monthly toll in three years.

At least three more have been killed in July, including one on Sunday, the day Panetta arrived in Baghdad on his first trip to Iraq as defence secretary.

Washington still has about 46,000 troops in Iraq more than eight years after the 2003 invasion that ousted Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein but is scheduled to withdraw its forces by year-end under a security pact between the two countries.

"We are very concerned about Iran and the weapons they are providing to extremists here in Iraq. And we're seeing the results of that," Panetta said in an address to US troops in Baghdad.

"In June we lost a hell of a lot of Americans as a result of those attacks. And we cannot just simply stand back and allow this to continue to happen ..."

Panetta said Washington's first effort would be to press the Iraqi government and military to go after Shi'ite groups responsible for the attacks. He was scheduled to meet Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki later on Monday.

"Secondly, to do what we have to do unilaterally, to be able to go after those threats as well, and we're doing that," he said, referring to the right of US forces to defend themselves on Iraqi soil.

"And thirdly, to bring pressure on Iran to not engage in this kind of behaviour. Because, very frankly, they need to know that our first responsibility is to protect those that are defending our country. And that is something we are going to do."

LETHAL INSURGENCY

US forces officially ended combat operations in Iraq last August and now operate largely in the background, training and assisting Iraqi police and soldiers against a weakened but still lethal insurgency that launches hundreds of attacks each month.

For US, more at stake in Bahrain than base alone

Activist Post

WASHINGTON (AFP) - As political unrest shakes its tiny Gulf ally Bahrain, much more is at stake for the United States than just the fate of the US Fifth Fleet's base, analysts said.

  Also in play are Washington's extensive strategic ties with Bahrain's influential oil-rich neighbor Saudi Arabia and efforts by US arch-foe Iran to spread its influence from across the Gulf, they said.

In many ways, the unrest in Bahrain "is much more dangerous" for the US than the current state of affairs in Egypt, more than a week after mass protests forced president Hosni Mubarak to step down, said analyst Aaron David Miller.

To be sure, Egypt has greater weight than Bahrain, said Miller, a former State Department analyst and negotiator who is now an analyst with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

It is the largest and most powerful Arab state, has a peace treaty with Israel and receives $1.3 billion in US military aid each year.

And the Egyptian-US alliance remains intact, at least for now.

However, Bahrain's vulnerability "to more convulsive change and the impact that it could have vis-a-vis Arab policy for Iran, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf makes it ... a more hot-button issue right now," Miller told AFP.

The Sunni Arab leaders of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, who govern over restive Shiite Arab populations near Shiite but non-Arab Iran, fear Washington's push for reform will sow greater instability, said analyst Patrick Clawson.

They strongly opposed Washington's pressure on Egypt for a transition to democracy to ease out Mubarak, according to Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"The perception in the (Gulf) region is that democracy means either the complete chaos you had in Iraq or else the stasis and bickering you had in Kuwait," he said.

And if needed, the Saudis may be prepared to repeat their intervention in Bahrain in the 1990s, when they sent armored personnel carriers across the causeway linking the neighbors.

"So the Saudis are in a position to ensure that things don't get out of hand in Bahrain and they are of a mind to do that. That is a powerful constraint to what the United States can do under these circumstances," Clawson said.  

The course of events could put a strain on the US-Saudi strategic relationship, which involves US military bases and billions of dollars in US weapons sales, as well as close cooperation on regional diplomacy and counter-terrorism.



Bahrain, fearing Iran's meddling, may continue taking a tough line toward unrest, although Bahraini security forces withdrew Saturday from a Manama square that had been the focal point of bloody anti-regime protests.

The implications of the apparently conciliatory move were not immediately clear.



"The Gulf rulers will be petrified that there is an Iranian influence in all of this, but I think the Iranians will be pretty incompetent" in trying to gain influence in the region, Clawson said, noting that will not prevent them from making a "good attempt" to do so.

What's more, he said, Arab Shiites increasingly look to their own leaders rather than Iran for guidance.



Nonetheless, analysts expressed concern about Iran.

"The issue of Iran is critical. What is a good outcome for us?" Miller asked.

"Here you have Iranian access to that Shia majority. You could argue that an Iraq-like outcome is not out of the question," he continued, referring to how Shiites now dominate affairs in Baghdad with some backed by Iran.

Michelle Dunne, a former Middle East specialist at the State Department, agreed that the Saudis would have a hard time accepting political change in Bahrain and that the Iranians would try to exploit instability there.



"The Bahraini problem is definitely a home-grown problem," said Dunne, now a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"This is not Iran manipulating the politics of an Arab state, but the Bahraini Shia are desperate. They will accept support from where they can get it."



As for the naval base, analysts said its presence is not currently the focus of Shiite-driven protests, though it could develop as such if protesters eventually succeed in changing the government.

" At some point, that's going to be rethought... whether it's appropriate to have a US naval base there or not," said Dunne.

Anthony Cordesman, a former Defense Department intelligence analyst, said the US base in Bahrain is "very important" in light of the "steady buildup" by the naval branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards over the past decade.