 A series of car bombs killed 160 people in a Shi'ite stronghold in Baghdad on Thursday in the bloodiest single attack since the U.S. invasion of 2003. As political leaders scrambled in public to hold Iraqis back from all-out sectarian civil war, they imposed an indefinite curfew on the capital.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who will meet U.S. President George W. Bush for what is shaping up to be a crisis summit in Jordan next week, vowed to defeat the "dark hand of conspiracy" and urged Iraqis to "refrain from acts of passion". But similar appeals after a previous provocative bombing, at a major Shi'ite shrine at Samarra in February, failed to stop a wave of bloodshed that has gathered strength ever since, killing a record 3,700 civilians in October alone as a cycle of fear and revenge has taken hold in Baghdad and neighbouring regions. "We call on people to act responsibly and to stand together to calm the situation," Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi and Shi'ite party leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim said in a joint televised statement, accompanied by Iraq's Kurdish president. Posted by: Fred 2006-11-24 |
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