"Iraqi oil refinery, jail hit in attacks" by Ann M. Simmons/Los Angeles Times December 11, 2007
BAGHDAD - Seven inmates were killed yesterday when mortar shells slammed into an Iraqi Interior Ministry jail here, Iraqi security officials said. A few miles south, fire broke out at one of Iraq's main oil refineries, a possible case of sabotage.
There were conflicting reports about the cause of the blaze, but police said a rocket shell hit a gas tanker. More than 450 attacks have been carried out against Iraq's oil installations or industry employees since the US-led invasion in March 2003, according to analysts who monitor security issues related to energy. Attacks occurred Friday and Saturday in the northern oil hub of Baiji.
Police, meanwhile, announced the arrest of four suspects in the weekend assassination of a police chief in the southern Iraqi province of Babil.
The arrests came a day after Major General Qais al-Maamouri and two of his bodyguards were killed in Hillah, capital of the predominantly Shi'ite Muslim province, after a bomb hit his convoy. The suspects, police said, were found to have significant traces of explosives on their bodies.
In the northern city of Kirkuk yesterday, a colonel and two policemen were killed when gunmen opened fire on their convoy. In Baghdad, the manager of the Rashad hospital for mental and psychiatric diseases was gunned down while driving home.
The ongoing violence was the latest reminder of the dangers Iraqis continue to face, despite significant security improvements in recent months. On Human Rights Day yesterday, an annual international event, some Iraqis said they felt only slightly better off than when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq.
Now if that isn't a qualifier, I don't know what is!
Yup, BETTER during the Saddam times!!!!!
And as for Human Rights Day, go down a memory hole, will you?
Key concerns include the treatment of detainees, growing violence against women, and the fear of speaking one's mind on political issues for fear of sectarian retaliation - concerns that many here say contradict the goal of the invasion to bring Iraqis greater freedoms.
Omar Jaboori, human-rights adviser to Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who has been an outspoken critic of the treatment of detainees since the start of the war:
"Before 2003 there were [human-rights] violations, but not like the violations we are seeing today."
Bush's "LIBERATION" is a HUMAN RIGHTS ATROCITY and a WAR CRIME, folks!!!!!!!!!!
Jaboori said about 32,000 people were being held by Iraqi security forces. The number being held by US-led coalition forces is 25,500, according to the US military.
US military officials say they have gone to great lengths to eliminate abuses at their detention facilities in Iraq. Jaboori said Hashimi had proposed to the Iraqi government that most detainees be granted a pardon.
Said Arikat, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, said in a written response to questions:
"[Marked improvements] had been made in the past three or four months on the status of detainees in Iraqi prisons, [resulting from efforts by the judicial authorities to streamline and speed up the review of detainees' cases; however, overall], the current human-rights situation in Iraq remains of serious concern [to his agency]."
Oh, yeah, Iraq is so much better!!!
It's a HELL HOLE worse than the Saddam times!
"Attacks in Baghdad Kill 9 and Damage a Refinery" by CARA BUCKLEY
BAGHDAD, Dec. 10 — A spate of bomb, rocket and mortar attacks rocked areas of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least nine people and exploding part of a major oil refinery, sending up a thick column of smoke that dominated the city’s skyline for much of the day.
Yet despite the relative calm, the pace of attacks has quickened of late, with suicide and other bombers killing at least 50 people nationwide in the past week.
But that's all right!
The Times' lying about the surge success had it's effect (or so says the New York Times):
"More people cite the Iraq war as the most important issue facing the country than cite any other matter, though 38 percent say the dispatch of extra troops to Iraq this year is working."
The Baghdad explosions started before dawn on Monday, when rockets landed in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the American and Iraqi government buildings are housed behind miles of blast walls. There were no reported deaths, and officials would not comment on whether anyone was hurt.
An hour later, moments after sunrise, mortar shells landed on a large warehouse at the Dora oil refinery to the city’s south, igniting hundreds of tanks of gas and kerosene. The American military said a preliminary investigation indicated that the blaze was accidental, sparked by a pipe explosion, but Iraqi officials insisted that mortar rounds had struck.
The refinery is a half-century old and one of the biggest in Iraq, supplying generators at oil and gas stations with fuel. Its smokestack rises tall over the city, and spits out giant flames that brighten the sky at night. A spokesman for the Oil Ministry said oil production would not be affected by the blast or subsequent fire. There were no injuries reported.
Fifteen minutes after the refinery explosion, an improvised bomb blew up a car in Karada, a vibrant, ethnically mixed Baghdad neighborhood that hugs the Tigris River. Fifteen minutes after that, a missile hit a nearby intersection. No one was hurt in either attack. But two people died in a drive-by shooting that also took place in Karada, at 7:30 a.m.
Half an hour later, mortar rounds landed on a prison inside the Interior Ministry’s sprawling, dusty complex in central Baghdad. Prison medics rushed to tend to the casualties. Seven people died and 23 were wounded.
At 9 a.m., three policemen were wounded in a rocket attack in the affluent neighborhood of Mansour. At 10 a.m., an improvised bomb wounded five people in Baladiyyat, in the eastern part of the city.
An Iraqi police official would not say whether the attacks were connected, or speculate on who might have been behind them. Three days ago, a prominent Sunni extremist, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, called for an escalation of attacks against local residents who aligned themselves with American forces.
Mr. Baghdadi is the purported leader of the Islamic State in Iraq, a militant group linked with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni Arab extremist group that American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign led.
Yeah, and he is also a work of fiction!
After nightfall, a police brigadier and two of his officers were killed in an ambush as they journeyed back to the northern city of Kirkuk. Their convoy was returning from Baghdad with weapons supplies when it was struck by rockets, bombs and a volley of gunfire. Seven other people were wounded, and two policemen are still missing."
But it's hard work, and we are making progress!
You still buying that bullshit, readers?
