Two Car Bombers Attack Iraqi Police, as Insurgency Continues
By Ian Fisher
The New York Times
Monday 15 December 2003
Two powerful car bombs exploded at police stations in Baghdad today,
killing at least six Iraqi officers and announcing that the insurgency here
has not ended with the capture of Saddam Hussein.
"People did this to say, `We can do this even though you caught
Saddam,' " said Salem Abed Ali, 40, who was rocked at his breakfast table
this morning, along with his wife and two children, when a bomb exploded
across the street, at a police station in the Husseiniya neighborhood. "They
want to keep battling inside Iraqi lands."
In his national address on Sunday, President Bush cautioned Americans
that the "capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in
Iraq." His warning appeared to be confirmed in the rubble, shredded cars
and bloodied bits of human being at the sites of the two bombings today,
one of them at a place where American military investigators work but had
not yet shown up for the day.
Against the images of a bedraggled and helpless-looking Mr. Hussein
printed in Iraqi newspapers and played endlessly on satellite television, the
attacks also confronted Iraqis, as well as the American troops doing the
fighting, with the question of just what kind of force is mounting the attacks.
"Saddam does not have the power to do these things," said a police
lieutenant in Husseiniya, Ali Ismael, 25, his forehead bandaged and his
shirt dotted with bloody specks from the blast there. "His ability is too
weak. Last night we saw him in a hole."
United States officials, conceding that their knowledge of the insurgents is
weak, have blamed the attacks largely on loyalists to Mr. Hussein, Iraqi
Islamic extremists and Muslims from outside Iraq. The assumption has
been that some percentage has been fighting for Mr. Hussein's return to
power, and the question in the coming weeks will be whether the
insurgency will grow or shrink with Mr. Hussein's return to power no longer
a realistic prospect. Some Iraqis believe Mr. Hussein's capture may
actually fuel the insurgency.
Continues......
nytimes.com |
