Dang! With so many explosions and killings, its gets hard to remember things are getting better in Iraq like the GOP tells us. I guess my imagination makes the explosions and killings worse than what they are.
Yeah, that must be it!
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Nine Civilians Killed in New Iraq Violence
Thu Mar 18, 2004 12:42 PM ET
By Fiona O'Brien
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Nine civilians were killed in fresh violence in Iraq on Thursday when guerrillas mounted attacks two days before the first anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein.
A British military spokesman in Basra said four Iraqis were killed in an explosion outside the southern city's Mirbad Hotel. A child was one of at least two people wounded, witnesses said.
Three employees of a U.S.-funded television station were shot dead at Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, and two Iraqis, including a child, were killed in fighting between guerrillas and U.S. troops in another restive town, Falluja.
Guerrillas have targeted Iraqis seen as cooperating with U.S.-led occupying forces, who blame Saddam supporters and foreign Islamic militants for attacks.
The Basra attack occurred only hours after a suicide car bomber killed seven people, including a British engineer, at a hotel in Baghdad on Wednesday night. U.S. officials blamed that attack on Muslim militants, possibly linked to al Qaeda.
Occupying forces are on alert for an increase in violence in the run-up to Saturday's anniversary of the invasion on March 20 last year that toppled Saddam.
U.S. VOWS TO FINISH IRAQ MISSION
President Bush's administration stepped up vows that guerrilla attacks would not deflect it from its goal of bringing about a democracy in Iraq.
"Terrorists in Iraq seek to break the will of the Iraqi people. They believe that if they spill enough Iraqi blood they can halt Iraq's progress to democracy. They are wrong," Iraq's U.S. Governor Paul Bremer said in a statement.
Basra, a stronghold of Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims long oppressed under Saddam, has had fewer attacks than Baghdad and Sunni areas like Falluja and Baquba near the capital.
The hotel had been regularly used for news briefings by the British military and by the civilian administration of Iraq's second city. Continued ...
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reuters.com |
