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Iraq delays constitution after day of carnage
wish this didnât send the wrong message .... Iraqâs Governing Council on Wednesday declared three days of mourning and announced it was postponing the signing of its interim constitution after a day of carnage in which at least 170 people were killed. A series of co-ordinated attacks on Tuesday targeted two sites in Iraq sacred to Shia Muslims. Three bombs hit Kadhimiya, a northern suburb of Baghdad. A shrine at Karbala, 70km south of the Iraqi capital, was hit by at least five devices. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britainâs senior envoy in Iraq, said on Wednesday the interim constitution was a vital step towards a democratic state. Tuesdayâs attacks were part of "the last desperate struggle of the violent people to try to destroy this before we hand over power," Sir Jeremy told BBC radioâs Today programme. Predicting "bloody" days in the run-up to the handover of sovereignty to local authorities at the beginning of July, he said the upsurge in violence was expected and would be very difficult to stop. "This is a crunch period for the future of Iraq. Iraqi society has got to realise that they have got to unite against it," he said. Asked how long British troops would be in Iraq, he responded: "My prediction is at least another two years, maybe more than that." yeah. Both of the sites attacked on Tuesday were packed with Shia Muslims from Iraq and overseas celebrating the climax of the mourning period of Ashura. Fakher Jabir, a civil servant in Baghdad, said: "I was coming out of the Iranian school when the first bomb went off about 70 metres away and everyone ducked. Then they started running. The police were trying to calm them down so that vehicles could get through." He added: "At least 35 people were killed in front of me, including women and children. I was loading them on to trucks. I was picking limbs off the street. Am I supposed to be picking arms and hands off the street?" No group claimed responsibility for Tuesdayâs violence but the attacks raise the spectre of a civil war in Iraq pitting Sunni against Shia Muslim. Members of Iraqâs Governing Council condemned those responsible for the countryâs bloodiest day since the fall of Saddam Hussein as "the forces of evil intent on sowing the seeds of havoc and civil war". Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shia cleric, blamed occupation forces for failing to provide security and or to control Iraqâs borders adequately. He urged Iraqis to unite and speed up "regaining the injured countryâs sovereignty, independence and stability". The US military said suicide bombers and mortars had been used in the Karbala attack. "This was a very sophisticated attack, well co-ordinated," said Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, US military spokesman. He said at least 58 were killed at Kadhimiya and at least 112 at Karbala, making a total of 170 deaths. Tuesdayâs toll surpassed that of August 19, when Sergio Vieira de Mello, UN special envoy, and 21 others died in Baghdad; that of August 29, when Muhammed Baqir al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and at least 84 others were killed in Najaf; and that of February 1, when two suicide bombers killed 105 people, including many senior Kurdish leaders, in Arbil. So great was the carnage that Kadhmiya hospital ran short of blood. Thousands of people swarmed to medical centres in and around Kadhmiya in response to radio appeal for donors. "We are boiling with rage but we will be patient," said eye-witness Ahmed Abbas, as he surveyed hundreds of shoes of the dead and injured in Kadhimiya. "Sunnis have nothing to do with this crime, they were Wahhabis," he added, referring to the puritanical Saudi-based sect which denounces the Shia practice of visiting shrines as pagan. interesting distinction - not all Iraqi Sunnis are willing to sign up to Wahabism Others blamed the Americans for dissolving the countryâs security forces. A spokseman for the Governing Council said on Wednesday that although no new date had been set for signing the interim constitution, the document was ready and it was only because of the attacks that the law had been postoned. Posted by: rkb 2004-03-03 |
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