Just in time for the Week-Ender Shit-Eater to MISS!!!
Coincidence?
"Suicide Bomber Kills 40 at Iraq Highway Rest Stop"
"A suicide bomber on Sunday attacked a crowd of Shiite pilgrims heading toward the city of Karbala to visit the Shrine of Imam Hussein, killing at least 40 people and wounding at least 100, Iraqi officials said. The American military said that at least 60 people had been wounded.
The attack occurred at a rest station for pilgrims along a highway on the outskirts of Iskandariya, 45 miles south of Baghdad.
In northern Iraq, on the third day of a Turkish military incursion to pursue Kurdish insurgents, eight Turkish soldiers were killed in fighting, the Turkish military said.
Witnesses to the suicide bombing said they heard a shrill cry of “God is great” just before a huge explosion ripped through the throng of pilgrims. Two witnesses said they believed that the bomber was a woman, though security officials did not immediately announce the sex or identity of the assailant.
Sigh!
“There was a big, huge sound of the explosion,” said Salman Khadem, 45, who was serving pilgrims who stopped to perform midday prayers or to picnic at a volunteer tent.
“Flesh and blood went everywhere, bodies were flying in the air,” he said, adding that most were women and children, local volunteers serving the pilgrims.
Hot shrapnel cut across Mr. Khadem’s leg, but he said he was still able to assist the wounded and drove one boy to a hospital in the city of Hilla, which is also nearby.
American forces quickly descended on the scene after the explosion, witnesses said. But some complained that the Iraqi security forces were not attentive enough to the long stretch of highway through a region called the “triangle of death,” a predominately Sunni Arab area where sectarian clashes have claimed hundreds of lives since 2003.
Shiites were on pilgrimage to commemorate the 40th day after the killing of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, by the Sunni caliphate army around A.D. 680.
Lying on a gurney in Hilla General Hospital, Ahmed Yassin, 28, said that he was ushering pilgrims into the tent along with his group of youth volunteers, which organizes the rest area every year for the thousands who make the journey.
“I was a couple of meters away from where they were searching people at the entrance of the tent,” he said. About 50 volunteers were standing outside the shelter and more were inside finishing their meals and prayers before restarting their slow march southward, he said.
Mr. Yassin said he believed that the suicide bomber took advantage of the time of day, just after prayers, and the large crowd that had gathered there. Their shelter is one of the few available to pilgrims in the predominately Sunni region, he said, and therefore was unusually crowded.
“I saw a woman rush into the tent,” said Mr. Yassin. “Then there was an explosion and I went unconscious.”
Mr. Yassin’s face was streaked with blood and he spoke in a weak voice. Before he could finish his account, doctors wheeled his gurney into an operating room.
Another wounded volunteer, Fadel Khadhim, 23, said, “The smell of burned flesh is still stuck in my nose.”
Casualties were taken to at least three overwhelmed hospitals in the area, where medical officials said they did not have enough supplies or doctors to treat them.
The bombing was at least the second attack against Shiite pilgrims on Sunday. In the morning attackers threw grenades along the pilgrims’ route in Dora, a Baghdad suburb that was the scene of several horrific massacres and mass kidnappings two years ago, but has recently calmed down. The attack killed at least one person and wounded at least 17 others, the American military said.
The Iskandariya bombing was the largest attack since two suicide bombing attacks at the beginning of February, one at a Baghdad pet market, and the other in the New Baghdad neighborhood, that killed at least 90 people.
Two soldiers were killed in Baghdad on Sunday, one from small-arms fire, the other from a roadside bomb, the American military said. The military also announced that a suspected insurgent had been killed and four others detained in Baghdad on Sunday.
In northern Iraq, a car bomb exploded outside of a volunteer militia office in Hawaja, killing one militia leader and wounding at least 12 others who are part of the Awakening movement, in which thousands of predominately Sunni tribesmen have turned against insurgents and allied themselves with the American military. Awakening members have been targets of the insurgents for months.
In the fighting in northern Iraq, Turkish artillery and helicopters struck Kurdish militant positions, bringing the total number of casualties to 15 Turkish soldiers and more than 112 Kurdish fighters since the fighting began on Thursday, the military said.
The Turkish military, equipped with sophisticated weaponry and American-produced fighter jets, has the upper hand, but the Kurdish fighters, the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the P.K.K., have used their intimate knowledge of the terrain to evade attacks. The rebels also scored some of their own victories, claiming to have shot down a Turkish helicopter on Friday.
The military acknowledged that a helicopter had gone down, but said the reason for the crash was unknown.
Turkey began an intermittent bombing campaign against the rebel group in December. The group wants greater rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, but is considered a terrorist organization by Turkish and American officials.
The bombings, however, are upsetting some Iraqis, who consider them a violation of sovereignty. The office of Moktada al-Sadr, a militant Shiite cleric with millions of followers and one of Iraq’s largest armed militias, issued a statement on Sunday calling on the Turkish government to withdraw its forces...."
Bush is a uniter! Uniting Shiite and Kurd!!!
For the record, readers:
Occupation Iraq: Israeli-Trained Death SquadsProp 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-Duhs" Catch-and-Release Program
Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group
How much more evidence you need, readers?
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."
By the way, the number of Iraqis killed by the surge has been around 300 per day, 10,000 per month -- with 1.2 million Iraqis dead since the invasion, mainly due to the U.S. military's 75 air raids a day, and the five-fold increase in air bombings.
Also see: Story Iraq: MSM Lied About Death Tolls
Memory Hole: 600,000 DEAD!
Occupation Iraq: One Million Dead Iraqis
