"Two bombs kill 72 in Baghdad"
"Related
Horrors rampant in city 'full of sorrow'
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Fri Feb 1, 2008 1:01 PM GMT
By Paul Tait and Aws Qusay
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bomb blasts ripped through two popular pet markets in Baghdad on Friday, killing 72 people in the deadliest attacks in the city in six months and dealing a bitter blow to Iraqi hopes that security is getting better.
Police said a female suicide bomber killed 45 people and wounded 82 at the Ghazil pet market in central Baghdad.
Another blast shortly after, caused either by a roadside bomb or a second female suicide bomber, killed 27 people and wounded 67 at a bird market in southern Baghdad, they said.
While attacks have continued to fall across Iraq in recent months, the latest blasts underscore U.S. military warnings that a return to the violence that took Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war is still possible.
At the Ghazil market, one of Baghdad's most popular gathering places and which has been bombed at least three times in the past year, people stared at the destruction as workers swept up body parts and blood-stained animal boxes.
"I came here to enjoy myself. I don't know how I survived," said witness Abu Haider, who was covered in blood as he stood among ruined stalls and carcasses of birds and other animals.
"I was right there at the scene when the blast happened. It knocked me over. When I managed to get up, I saw dozens had been killed and wounded," he said.
One witness said the female bomber entered the market saying she had birds to sell. Scores of people gathered and then the bomb underneath her clothing went off, the witness said.
Police said the second attack was caused by a roadside bomb.
I thought you said it was another female suicider.
That's what the New York Times claims (see below).
But Major-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military in Baghdad, said in both attacks women had been loaded with explosives which were then detonated remotely.
"We found the mobiles used to detonate the women," he said.
Ambulances tried to push through packed streets to get to Ghazil after the blast, which occurred in almost exactly the same spot as a bombing which killed 13 people on November 23.
Police and civil defence officials piled the wounded into wheelbarrows, cars and the back of pick-up trucks while U.S. soldiers helped secure the area, witnesses said. Officials at nearby hospitals said they struggled to cope with the wounded.
"Most people who visit this market are poor and just want to enjoy themselves but they came and got killed," said Hassan Salman, who sells bird seed at the Ghazil market.
BIG BLOW
The Ghazil market only opens on Fridays and is a popular spectacle visited by hundreds of Baghdadis. It sells a colourful range of creatures from guard dogs and monkeys to parrots, pigeons and tropical fish.
The November blast, caused by a bomb hidden inside a box of birds, was a big psychological blow for residents who had just begun returning to the streets after security crackdowns last year helped arrest a slide towards all-out sectarian civil war.
The market has been bombed several times, with about 10 people killed in two separate blasts there in January and February last year.
The latest blast was the worst single attack in Baghdad for six months. Fifty people were killed when a fuel truck exploded in the capital on August 1 last year.
Violence has fallen sharply across Iraq, with the number of attacks down 60 percent since last June, allowing Iraqis to venture out to markets and restaurants as they attempt to return to a semblance of normal life.
The declining violence has been attributed to 30,000 extra U.S. troops, which became fully deployed last June, and the growth of primarily Sunni Arab local police units.
Despite the improved security, U.S. commanders warn that Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, blamed for most large-scale attacks in Iraq, remains a dangerous enemy.
On Thursday, Iraqi government figures showed that 466 Iraqi civilians had died violently in January, more than 76 percent lower than the 1,971 killed in January 2007.
(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim and Wisam Mohammed, Writing by Paul Tait and Michael Holden; Editing by Dean Yates and Dominic Evans)"
Also see:
Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh and the OSI
Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh's Greatest Hits
Prop 101: The "Terrorism" Business
Prop 102: Iraq and Government Lies
Al-CIA-Duh
"Al-CIA-Duhs" Catch-and-Release Program
Asymmetrical Warfare Group
Operation Gladio
Operation Northwoods
Salvador Option
Special Police Commandos
Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group
Prop 201 tutorial
FRU
How much more evidence you need, readers?
This?
And did I mention the DOD's MSM press offices in Lincoln, the Pentagon, or Langley?
That's where the AmeriKan press gets their "reports."
Case closed!
After reading those truth links, check out the blatant Zionist propaganda the New York Times runs about the incident.
"Dozens Killed in Worst Baghdad Attack in Months" by STEPHEN FARRELL and MUDHAFER AL-HUSAINI
BAGHDAD — Two female suicide bombers killed 65 people and wounded 149 at Baghdad pet markets on Friday, the twin blasts inflicting the bloodiest day on the Iraqi capital for six months.
The coordinated attacks, at the hugely popular Ghazil animal market and the smaller New Baghdad bird market four miles away, came within minutes of each other on the Muslim day of prayer.
Both areas, in mixed areas of eastern Baghdad, have been attacked numerous times before despite a heavy Iraqi security presence.
They came after a relative lull in violence in Baghdad, with attacks having fallen 60 percent across the country since last June.
The Ghazil bomb, which police say killed 38 people, exploded at exactly the same point inside the walled-off market as a Nov. 23 bomb hidden in a box of birds, which killed 13.
The New Baghdad bomb killed 27 along a parade of shops where angry stallholders have long demanded the kind of protective walls that have been installed in many other vulnerable markets.
Together, the two bombings made for the worst carnage in Baghdad since Aug. 1, when a car bomb and a truck bomb killed 70 people in Hurriya and Mansour, according to Iraqi police officials.
The American military, which gave a lower combined death toll of 27, said it suspected the bombings were the work of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group which it claims is foreign-led. The military had blamed the earlier November attack in Ghazil on Iranian-backed militias.
Friday’s bombings caused dismay among stallholders and residents, with widespread pessimism and predictions of a downturn in security as American begin to draw down to pre-surge levels of around 130,000 troops.
The Ghazil market has been a regular target. It was struck a year ago in January, when 15 people died, but after months of increased American troop presence it regained some of its vitality. But last November’s deadly attack came as a reminder that security gains in this city are fragile.
“The terrorists’ main target is to kill as many people as they can and this place is perfect for them,” said Rabaa Hussein, 47. “All sects come to this market, Christians, Shiites, Sunnis, everyone.”
Then WTF?! CUI BONO, readers?
“With these explosions their aim is to make the government look bad and show that the occupation forces did not achieve their main goal of democracy in Iraq,” he added.
“If the Americans withdraw it will definitely affect things,” he added. “It would be a disaster for Iraq.”
That does it!!!!
I'm tired of the god-damn New York Times and their shit lies!
I mean, COME ON!!!!!!!
Hussein Ali, 31, a birdseller who lives near the Ghazil market but moved his stall to Sadr City a year ago because of previous attacks, echoed his pessimism. “It will get worse,” he said, beneath shattered windows and piles of victims’ shoes.
Iraq’s chief military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi told The Associated Press that the bombers appeared to be mentally impaired and that the explosives were detonated by remote control.
I mean, really. Come on, hey!
Yup, RETARDED TERRORISTS!
And JUST WHO would have their finger on the remote?
"Al-CIA-Duh?"
Pffffffffftttttt!!!!!
Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem al-Ezzi, a senior officer in the Ministry of Interior police commandos, said officials at the Ghazil market had scrutinized the suicide bomber’s head and concluded that she had Downs Syndrome. However Iraqi officials have made similar claims in the past, and other witnesses said her head could have been distorted by the blast.
Ya think?!?!
This LIE is OUTRAGEOUS, readers!
One eyewitness, Mohammed Qasem, 35, a roadside vendor at Ghazil, said he saw the woman minutes before the explosion, apparently behaving normally.
“She was guiding a small kid with her and she wasn’t uncomfortable at all because she was walking and looking behind her,” he said.
“The child who was with her stopped near me when I saw her for the last time, and a few seconds later the explosion happened and I was thrown a couple of meters away from my booth. I recognized her later when I saw the head but the child had vanished, and I want to know what happened to him because I can’t forget the innocent look in his eyes.”
This ZIONIST PROPAGANDA just gets SO SHAMELESS and DESPERATE!!!!!!!!
As adults collected scraps of flesh from a nearby roof children helped pick up the human remains.
“Death has become so normal for us,” said one, Uday, 13. “It doesn’t scare me any more because I’ve seen a lot.”
Bush has LIBERATED YOU!!!!!!
As police officers finally covered the head with a cardboard box, Abbas Aziz, a member of the Iraqi tribal Awakening movement that helps secure the area, said the bomber appeared to have slipped through because, unlike men, women are not searched at the checkpoint.
“We search every single person coming to the market, especially those who are carrying bags or boxes but the suicide bomber was a female whom we don’t search at all,” he said. “We have already learned the lesson.”
In recent months American commanders have noted insurgents switching from car bombings to suicide vests — -and using women as suicide bombers — in areas where checkpoints and roadblocks make it less easy for them to smuggle in vehicles capable of causing greater carnage.
Yup, PUSH that U.S. PROPAGANDA and LIES, Times, nice going!
“It’s a more precise delivery tool,” said Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, the American commander in northern Iraq, last month as he outlined how Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was adapting to the proliferation of Iraqi Army forces, police officers and Combined Local Citizen checkpoints in Diyala, just north of Baghdad.
“With cars sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t get them through checkpoints, but you can precisely kill people with suicide vests.” He also noted what he called “an increase in the recruiting of widows of former terrorists to be suicide vest wearers.”
I'm about ready to puke, readers!
How the FUCK would HE KNOW THAT?
Go get 'em then!
Yup, ZIONIST PROPAGANDA pure and simple!
How OUTRAGEOUS this fucking "report" is!
In an interview with The A.P. in Washington on Friday, Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Baghdad, shared his analysis, saying that the bombings demonstrated that Al Qaeda had “found a different, deadly way” to try to destabilize Iraq.
Why is each paragraph just government propaganda, readers?
What is wrong with the New York Times?
“Their car bomb capabilities have been badly disrupted so now, as we saw today and as we’ve seen for some time, they are moving toward suicide vests, in this case suicide vests worn by women,” he said. “No one’s doing victory dances and today’s horrific bombings illustrate why that’s the case.”
At the New Baghdad market, army units sealed off the area, inside which bloodstained feathers clung to broken cages and shop windows secured with several layers of thick blast-proof wiring.
Stallholders said the woman’s explosives blew up around 10:30 a.m., just as they were getting news of the Ghazil bombing.
“We were just talking about the first bomb when it happened,” said Abbas Muhammad Awad, 54, a pigeon seller. “There was not enough time for people to leave because it was only 5 or 10 minutes between the bombs. Many kids were killed because children usually gather around the bird-sellers.”
His colleague Yahya Omran, 50, who is scarred in several places from a previous attack on the market, complained that despite repeated requests, the authorities had failed to erect concrete blast walls, like those at some other markets.
“I came back to work here because I have to pay rent and I need to support my family,” he said. “I thought everything was starting to get better, but then this happened. I think things are going to get worse.
“It’s chaos.”
I can't stand the New York Times and their fucking lies anymore, America.
This article was a piece of pure Zionist trash, folks!
Why I am not purchasing them anymore.
