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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (55428)	4/1/2007 1:37:09 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

What surge? ____________________________________________________________ Iraq toll touches 400 in three days By Jay Deshmukh in Baghdad March 30, 2007 10:58pm ALMOST 400 people have been killed in Iraq over the past three days, as insurgents and sectarian militias defied a massive US security crackdown billed as a last chance to restore order to Baghdad. A series of coordinated bombings of Shiite marketplaces in and north of the capital undercut a latest plea from embattled Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a joint effort to curb the bloodshed threatening to tear his country apart. “The country is facing many challenges which need a consolidated front in which all Iraqis must participate,” Mr Maliki said. Just hours later, 125 people were killed in marketplace bombings in Baghdad and the Shiite town of Khalis. Two suicide bombers detonated explosives that tore through a market in the capital yesterday that medics said killed 82 men, women and children as they shopped before the evening curfew and in preparation for the Muslim day of rest. The bombings in the Al-Shaab district, close to the Shiite bastion of Sadr City, bore the hallmark of Al-Qaeda linked Sunni extremists waging sectarian attacks on Shiites in a bid to keep alive the brutal communal warfare. The attacks are seen as the latest challenge to the Mahdi Army militia made up of impoverished Shiite youths who have led the counter-attack on Sunnis but who have recently melted away to escape the Baghdad crackdown. The blasts came just days after former US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told a farewell news conference that violence had fallen by 25 per cent in and around Baghdad since 80,000 Iraqi and US troops deployed under the new security plan. Hours before the Baghdad bombings, a string of vehicle bombs, roadside bombs and mortar attacks killed another 43 people and wounded dozens in Khalis, said Ahmed al-Khadran, brother of the town's mayor. The restive town lies in Diyala province, which has become the most dangerous stretch of country outside the capital. Four coordinated car bombings and mortar attacks there struck a market, courthouse and a new army base. As in Baghdad, the explosions unleashed mayhem, killing young and old indiscriminately as they shopped, in a favourite tactic of Sunni extremists bent on inflicting maximum civilian casualties. On Tuesday, doctors and army officers said 160 Iraqis were slaughtered in the northern town of Tal Afar, 85 in a suicide bombing targeting a Shiite crowd waiting for food rations and 75 Sunni men shot in a revenge killing spree. Nearly 200 others were wounded in the bombing and 40 men remain missing after being dragged out of their homes at gunpoint in the shooting rampage. In Iraq's chilling sectarian conflict, many bodies are never found or taken for certification at city morgues, especially those who are kidnapped. Another 23 bodies were discovered in the nearby northern city of Mosul on Friday, including the corpses of three policemen, said local police Major Samir Khalaf. A security official said 25 bodies were found in Baghdad late Thursday. The Government has vowed to take legal action against those responsible for the Tal Afar shootings but although Maliki has launched a probe into the killings, no details have since been provided. A group of 13 policemen was initially detained for the bloody spree but later freed by the Iraqi army deployed in the town. Iraqi officials and the US military have reported another 53 Iraqis killed in random attacks and five Americans dead in the past three days. The US army announced today the latest death of a soldier in a roadside bomb attack in the capital, bringing the US military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3243, according to the Pentagon, in a rising toll fuelling US domestic pressure on Washington to bring the forces home. In Sadr City today, US-led forces captured a suspect whom the military said was linked to new armour piercing weapons that the Americans allege are smuggled in from Iran like weapons supplied to Lebanese militia Hezbollah. news.com.au