Middle East News

At least 42 killed in Iraq (2nd Roundup)

Jun 26, 2008, 20:06 GMT

Baghdad - At least 42 people were killed and 62 wounded in separate attacks across Iraq, police sources and media reports said Thursday.

In Nineveh province, 17 people were killed when a car bomb aimed at provincial Governor Doreid Kashmola, went off in the centre of Mosul, police sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The blast left at least 62 people wounded.

Kashmola survived the explosion, while five of his security guards were among the wounded, sources said.

It was not the first time Nineveh's governor survived an assassination attempt.

The Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported there were two other explosions in Mosul on Thursday, leaving 4 people wounded, including a policeman.

In another incident, at least 20 people were killed when a suicide bomber targeted a meeting of clan chiefs and tribal leaders in the town of Karma in the western province of Anbar, al-Arabiya news channel said.

The attacker, who blew himself up while the council was meeting, managed to enter through an unguarded gate, al-Arabiya said.

Senior local officials and clan chiefs were reported to be among those killed, while US troops were believed to be among the injured.

The US military was expected to delay the handover of security responsibilities in Anbar province due to the explosion and bad weather forecasts, al-Iraqiya state television said.

The province is scheduled to become the first Sunni province to be transferred to Iraqi security control on Saturday. It will be the 10th of Iraq's 18 provinces to revert to Iraqi control. The previous nine have been Kurdish or Shiite.

Separately, the US military said one of its soldiers was killed by armour-piercing explosives in the predominantly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad, adding to latest in a surge of violence that saw at least nine soldiers killed this week.

The US military says the charges come from Iran.

The fatality pushes the number of soldiers who died in June to at least 26. Some 19 soldiers were killed in May.

In another news, the US military said its troops killed three 'criminals' after they were attacked by small arms fire near Baghdad International Airport about 8:40 am on Wednesday.

Iraqi officials were quoted as saying the victims were identified as employees of a bank at the airport, including a woman.

The incident is one of several recent episodes in which US and Iraqi officials have given contradictory accounts of what happened.

In a similar episode on Wednesday, witnesses told dpa that five Iraqis from the same family were killed in a US air strike on a house in the town of Tikrit. Iraqi officials confirmed the victims were civilians.

The US military said they had come under fire from an 'al-Qaeda terrorist' and called in air support when he refused to surrender.



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Tell us again, SP4, how great things areJun 26th, 2008 - 23:19:26

Tell us again, you mindless parrot of a propagandist, how this is a sign of progress. Let that prion-infested brain of yours loose, and reveal your dementia.

Explain again how multiple outbreaks of violence mean 'winning'.

Do tell us again why al Qaeda is a greater threat than the Sunni insurgency, which is VASTLY larger in numbers of participants.

ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD91HOPLG0

BAGHDAD (AP) — Officials say a car bomb has exploded near the government office in the northern city of Mosul and 18 people are dead. The governor of surrounding Nineveh province, Duraid Kashmola, says about 60 others were wounded in the Thursday blast.

-----------

BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt Thursday inside a municipal government building west of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people attending a meeting of tribal sheiks, police said.

Col. Fawzi Fraih, civil defense director of Anbar province, said the sheiks were members of a group opposed to al-Qaida in Iraq and were meeting with Americans when the attack occurred in Karmah, about 20 miles west of Baghdad.

The U.S. military would not confirm whether Americans were inside the building during the attack, the third against a municipal government meeting in Iraq this week.

Both Sunni and Shiite extremists appear determined to try to undermine efforts to build government institutions at the local level.

Ten people, including four Americans, were killed Tuesday in a bombing in a municipal council office in the Shiite area of Sadr City in Baghdad.

Two Americans were shot dead and four wounded Monday when a disgruntled official opened fire as they left a municipal building in Salman Pak about 15 miles south of the capital.

In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb blew up Thursday as provincial Gov. Duraid Kashmola was inspecting damage from a rocket attack, police said. The governor escaped injury but eight people were killed — including five of his guards — and 22 people were wounded, police said.

The U.S. military says violence in Iraq has dropped to its lowest level in more than four years, but attacks are continuing as Sunni and Shiite extremists try to regroup and undermine security gains.

===========================

(The first order of business for a new President is to send people over there who can COUNT, and can rebut the bullcrap coming from the Pentagon on orders of the White House. It's time we had a military leadership who listened to the President, rather than the inverse)

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SP4:You seeJun 27th, 2008 - 03:41:56

..IK have a weakness:

I believe in people. I believe that, if you confront evil, you can beat it.

Now I can be a half-empty glass like you, but that would mean giving up my spirit. I just am not willing to do that.

We have won every battle. We have secured most of the nation. The Iraqi's are stepping up. Their government is stepping up.

Go down your road? There is nothing at the end.

No thanks.

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You are a brainwashed simpletonJun 27th, 2008 - 09:21:16

RE:

Now I can be a half-empty glass like you, but that would mean giving up my spirit. I just am not willing to do that.

We have won every battle. We have secured most of the nation. The Iraqi's are stepping up. Their government is stepping up.

===============================

You have a half-empty head, and likely too much 'spirits'. You are the living embodiment of Bush's own 'mission accomplished' error of years ago.

Again, it's not about BATTLES. U.S. forces have superior training and equipment, and air power. This is like declaring victory in your kitchen against roaches by turning on the light and stomping, but missing the nest in the wall. Perhaps someday someone will offer a brain transplant, and you'll wonder how you could have been so dumb.

The Sunni are not being included in the progress, and are not seeing their share of oil revenues. No one is giving them jobs; and many of the CLC's paid on that same idiotic notion of 'faith' you speak of were never 'bought'. Those are the very same people creating violence now.

The foreign fighters aside, AQI is just another form of Sunni extremism, in reaction to the gains made by the Shia after many years of domination by Saddam, and even earlier governments.

'There are also allegations that the initial vetting process for the Awakening was flawed and that some people who still backed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia disguised their views and became part of the security forces or the Awakening groups. Sheiks in Anbar, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that they knew the man responsible for the Garma bombing. They said he had been a policeman and previously a member of the Anbar Awakening.'

Stop being such an ass; and go LEARN something, and stop cheerleading. $7 a gallon gas will be your reward.

================================

www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?th&emc=th

The bombings extended a pattern of multiple-casualty attacks in recent days that are clearly intended to kill local Iraqi leaders, in particular those who are believed to have collaborated with American forces against insurgents. Thursday’s attacks were among a string of deadly episodes in the past week that broke the previous several weeks’ lull in violence.

Most of the episodes have occurred in Sunni or mixed Sunni-Shiite areas where there has been mounting frustration over the lack of a political deal giving power to all of Iraq’s factions. Some were in small neighborhoods like Abu Dshir on the southern edge of Baghdad, and Madaen, which lies just to its southeast. There was also an attack on Tuesday on the Sadr City neighborhood council which killed six Iraqis, four Americans and an Iraqi-Italian interpreter.

Both of Thursday’s attacks raised questions about assertions by the United States military that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other Sunni extremist groups had been largely vanquished. Sheiks who survived the Anbar attack, a suicide bombing, accused Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni extremist group, of responsibility. In Mosul, bodyguards for the governor, the bomb’s likely target, said the same thing.

The marines and two interpreters killed in the suicide bombing had been attending the weekly meeting of the Awakening Council in the city of Garma, according to the American military and an Iraqi police officer. The Awakening groups are pro-American tribal alliances.

In Baghdad and in Anbar Province, there have been substantial American and Iraqi military campaigns to root out the insurgency. In those areas and in Diyala Province, where there was a suicide bombing a week ago, the Shiite-led government in Baghdad has frustrated the efforts of Sunni leaders to find government security jobs for Sunni tribal figures and former insurgents.

Although many of these people joined the Awakening movement and were paid by the Americans to help fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, few have been put on the government’s payroll.

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patriotJun 27th, 2008 - 15:53:33

Gaiacomm International to develop Defeat IED technology


Gaiacomm International will develop Counter (defeat) IED technology for the US Military to be used in Iraq and Afghanistan. This technology is currently classified because of its accurate nature of detection. When deployed it will be able to detect and disable any device in the ground, on person, inside vehicle or building within a determined range, also classified. Soldiers are dying thus, the emphasis on accurate detection. Other technologies currently in the field simply do not operate as planned, thus the need for Gaiacomm's technology.


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