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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (43672)	4/24/2004 1:05:44 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 89467

More Than 40 People Killed in Bloody Day for Iraq - Reuters ! By Michael Battye BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Five U.S. soldiers were among more than 40 people killed in a spate of attacks in Iraq (news - web sites) on Saturday, the latest violence in the bloodiest month for U.S.-led forces since they toppled Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). In one of the worst incidents of the day, at least 13 Iraqis were killed and 30 were wounded when rockets or mortar bombs struck a busy market in the Shi'ite Muslim area of Sadr City in Baghdad, witnesses and hospital sources said. "There was blood and bodies everywhere," said Bassam Abdul Rahim. Angry residents of Sadr City -- a powerbase of rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who U.S.-led forces have vowed to kill or capture -- held up bloodied human remains to television cameras and said U.S. helicopters had fired at the market. They put a sign on a dead donkey saying: "This is Bush." One woman was killed in a separate attack in the same area when a mortar bomb hit her home. Her daughter was wounded. The U.S. military said it had no immediate information on the incidents in Sadr City. SADR A WANTED MAN Sadr, who U.S. officials say is wanted by an Iraqi judge in connection with the murder of another cleric, is holed up with his Mehdi Army militia in the southern city of Najaf, a holy site to Iraq's Shi'ite majority. On Friday, Sadr threatened to unleash suicide bombers if he was attacked by U.S. forces poised just outside the city. U.S. forces say are allowing time for Iraqi mediators to resolve the standoff. Fourteen Iraqis were killed when a bus, traveling to Baghdad just ahead of a convoy of six U.S. military vehicles, was hit by a roadside bomb. The five U.S. soldiers were killed in a guerrilla rocket attack on a U.S. base just north of Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman said. Six other soldiers were wounded. U.S. helicopter gunships destroyed the truck from which the rockets were launched, but there was no word of casualties among the guerrillas. Since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March last year to oust Saddam, 515 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action -- more than a fifth of them this month. In Saddam's home town of Tikrit, a car bomb killed three policemen and wounded 16 people -- 12 of them police. It appeared to be a suicide attack. Polish soldiers killed five Iraqi gunmen who opened fire on their patrol in the holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, Polish military officials said. West of Baghdad, U.S. Marines were poised to resume an offensive in the Sunni town of Falluja unless guerrillas turned over heavy weapons. U.N. ENVOY URGES AGAINST SHOOTING Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations (news - web sites) special envoy to Iraq who is trying to put together an interim Iraqi government to take over from U.S.-led occupation authorities on June 30, urged the Marines to hold off. "I think that there is always a better solution than shooting your way into anywhere," Brahimi said. A few families who fled fierce fighting in Falluja earlier this month returned to the battle-scarred city on Saturday, hours after Iraq's U.S. Governor Paul Bremer said "major hostilities could resume at short notice." Brahimi said he wanted the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to be dissolved on June 30 and its politicians to be excluded from the interim government of technocrats he thinks should see Iraq through to elections in January 2005. In an interview with U.S. TV network ABC to be broadcast on Sunday, Brahimi dismissed the idea of expanding the existing 25-member council. "The fear is that, you know, as somebody put it, perhaps a bit too unkindly, they will clone themselves. And why do you want to have that?" said the former Algerian foreign minister. UPSURGE IN VIOLENCE The upsurge in violence this month -- including a series of car bombs in the southern Shi'ite city of Basra that killed 73 people -- has unnerved several countries with troops in Iraq. Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have said they are withdrawing and Washington is trying to persuade other states to remain after June 30, saying fledgling Iraqi forces cannot cope on their own. President Bush (news - web sites) acknowledged "tough work" lay ahead, saying the "enemies of freedom" would kill anyone in their campaign to stop a democratic Iraq emerging. "But the stakes are too high for us to leave," Bush said on Friday at a fund-raising meeting in Florida for his campaign to be re-elected in November. Britain said it might send more troops to replace the Spanish, but several other countries are committed to staying only until the end of June. (Additional reporting by Fiona O'Brien, Mussab Khairalla, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Seif Fouad, Sami al-Jumaili)