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| Iraq |
| Baghdad bomb kills 26 |
| 2007-03-06 |
| A powerful car bomb ripped through Baghdad’s oldest book market on Monday, killing at least 26 people and wounding 42, said a security official. The bomb exploded in the renowned Al-Mutanabi Street market in central Baghdad on the east bank of River Tigris, sending huge black plumes into the sky and enveloping the minarets of a mosque in acrid smoke and dust. A police source said that 54 people were injured in the blast. Three witnesses told Reuters it was a suicide car bomber. Meanwhile, Iraqi and US forces on Monday pushed into Shia militia bastions in Baghdad where they once fought raging street battles, as their security plan faced the first big test of its authority. The house-to-house searches in Sadr City are testing the resolve of Maliki’s government to back coalition forces in going after Shia militants in the bastion of one of its key allies, radical anti-American cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr. The shove into Sadr City began on Sunday when 600 US and 550 Iraqi troops set up checkpoints and visited homes in the Jamila district, where a police station is due to be converted into a fortified base for a joint US-Iraqi force. Coalition forces, meanwhile, were under fire from Maliki for a joint raid with Iraqi troops on his Interior Ministry’s intelligence office in Basra. A British military spokesman said that Sunday’s raid, in which 37 people being held prisoner at the office, had uncovered evidence of torture, but Maliki was furious, and issued a statement slamming the raid. “Maliki has ordered an investigation into the raid and has demanded that those behind this illegal act be punished,” said the statement. Separately, followers of Muqtada Al-Sadr warned they would not relinquish their cabinet posts unless other members of the ruling coalition did the same, setting the stage for a major political battle as Maliki prepares to reshuffle his administration. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 We may need some "wet works" in the Iraqi government, starting with Maliki and al-Sadr. We may need to keep fiddling until the Iraqis themselves get the message that we won't tolerate a government that kills its own people. We didn't get rid of one Saddam just to empower another. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-03-06 14:46 |