Posted on 04/03/2004 5:05:06 PM PST by Happy2BMe
By Fiona O'Brien
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a police chief in Baghdad on Saturday, the second to be shot dead in 24 hours and the latest in a growing list of security officers killed by insurgents who target anyone linked to Iraq (news - web sites)'s occupiers Police said the police chief of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, was shot after leaving his home in the capital. His car was riddled with bullets. On Friday night, the police chief in Kufa, further south, was shot dead along with a colleague.
Insurgents fighting the occupation have increasingly targeted members of the U.S.-trained fledgling Iraqi security forces. More Iraqi security officials have been killed in the past year than American soldiers.
The U.S.-led authorities in Iraq have warned attacks are likely to increase ahead of the planned transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30. The U.S. military says it has stepped up operations in reaction to the latest uptick in violence.
Near Baquba, north of Baghdad, a bomb planted in a car by the roadside exploded next to a passing U.S. military patrol. One Iraqi was injured in the blast. Witnesses said several U.S. soldiers were wounded but there was no U.S. confirmation.
In Basra, protesters demanding jobs clashed with Iraqi police, lobbing stones and smashing windows in the center of the southern port. Police said at least one officer was wounded.
Southern Iraq, controlled by a British-led force has been relatively calm compared to the rest of the country. But a series of protests in recent weeks have spilled over into violence. On Thursday, one protester was killed in clashes with police.
ROCKET HITS HOUSE
In the capital, two men were wounded when a rocket hit a Baghdad neighborhood on Saturday morning. Parts of one home were completely burned out after the explosion. There was a pool of blood in the hallway, and smoke still rising from an armchair.
Angry residents looking on blamed the attack on the Americans, who are increasingly blamed for everything in Iraq, as frustration grows at the unabated violence more than a year since the start of the war.
That anti-Americanism was seen in its most extreme form on Wednesday, when townspeople in Falluja mutilated the bodies of four American contractors shot dead by guerrillas, burning and kicking their corpses for hours.
Anyone seen as related to the occupiers has become a target for insurgents. Police officers, local politicians, foreigners and Iraqis working for international companies have been killed.
A senior military official said on Saturday that intelligence officers were viewing footage of the gruesome acts to identify those responsible and talk to witnesses.
The U.S. army has promised an overwhelming response, and says it would be better for the town to hand over the guilty without a fight.
"We don't believe that those people represent the vast majority of the people in Falluja, nor that Falluja is a metaphor for Iraq," the senior official said. "We are going to separate the enemy from the people and we are going to destroy them."
In Baghdad, thousands of supporters of defiant Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr marched through the streets of northeast Baghdad, in a show of strength punctuated by anti-occupation rhetoric.
Sadr, a young and radical Shi'ite cleric, has often spoken out against the U.S. occupation and has wide influence, especially among poor urban members of Iraq's Shi'ite majority.
"This is a message to the council of oppression and the U.S. who tried to tell the people we have no influence," Said Murtada Kinani, a construction worker who joined the parade, said. "Saddam could not stop us, do they think they can stop us?" In the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, Sadr's supporters protested outside a Spanish base demanding the release of one of his aides they said was detained by foreign forces. On Thursday night three Salvadoran soldiers were lightly wounded in Najaf during clashes with a separate armed gang. (Additional reporting by Michael Georgy and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Baghdad and Faris Mehdawi in Baquba)
Ducking . . .
Holy!?
Holy Shi'ite!
(Man - those Muslimes sure know how to treat their women . .)
- *Note - After what happened this week in Fallujah - sure as hell wasn't an ifidel taking ANY of these pics . .
(Does that kinda tell ya what we're up against in 'Raq?)
Lord - protect this man!
No. We have to kill them.
- Note: No infidel stepping out to take any of these pics . .
- Note: Still no sign of an infidel within ten miles.
- Didn't Hollywood do a horror flick with these creatures in it not too long ago? (Night of the Living Dead maybe?)
Holy Shi'ite!Yeah. What you said.
1,000,000,000-1
Pray for these courageous Iraqi security workers. Most have had family members murdered in horrendous ways by Saddam and co., and are standing up to those neighborhood bullies (and their mainstream press agents).
The burka women, like ANSWER rent-a-mobs, a false front.
We can count on anything that undermines our war effort leading the mainstream news daily 'til election day.
Gunmen killed a police chief in Baghdad on Saturday, the second to be shot dead in 24 hours and the latest in a growing list of security officers killed by insurgents who target anyone linked to Iraq's occupiers.
Occupiers. These war critics prefer the conveniently silent mass graves.
Sorry, AP, Kerry, Kofi. The good guys don't.
Good news:
8 Petraeus to Get Key Job in Iraq ~ Washington Post | 4/03/04 | Thomas E. Ricks
I doubt that our enemies will choose to make a martyr out of this well-respected leader.
I R not a woman.
But when I was in Saudi, that's all the poor creatures wore.
You really wouldn't want to get "up close" to one of them . . Muslims prefer their women having that "natural" odor to them.
One walked in a gold shop I was in and man - I didn't know a human could stink THAT bad.
Where's an ACc-130 when you really need one for crowd dispersal?
We liberated the Shi'ites from Saddam and they return the deed by burning us alive and hanging us from bridges.
The protest in the capital turned violent as some supporters of radical leader Moqtada Sadr threw themselves at the US tanks and a police officer said at least two of the demonstrators had been crushed.
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There was no immediate confirmation of the deaths from police headquarters or the US military.
Huge protests were also held in the central pilgrimage city of Najaf and as far south as Amara, while unarmed militiamen from Sadr's Mehdi Army paraded in Sadr City, a sprawling mainly Shiite neighbourhood of the capital regarded as a radical stronghold.
Sadr's followers have held almost daily demonstrations to protest the decision by the coalition last Sunday to close his weekly newspaper for 60 days on charges of inciting violence.
Early Saturday, Sadr supporters took to the streets of Najaf, reacting to unfounded rumours that Spanish coalition soldiers had detained Mustafa Yaacubi, the head of his office in the city.
Spanish commanders "categorically" denied the charge in a statement that was distributed to the crowd that formed outside the headquarters of the Spanish-led Plus Ultra Brigade in Najaf until mid-evening.
The protestors dismissed the denial, demanding the release of Yaacubi and calling for another sit-in to take place Sunday morning.
Rumours of Yaacubi's arrest also spread to the southern city of Amara where thousands of protestors took to the streets to vent their anger, an AFP correspondent said.
Sheikh Qais al-Khazaali, the head of Sadr's office in Baghdad, warned that his movement would react if Yaacubi was not quickly released.
"This is a new provocation by the coalition forces," Sheikh Khazaali told AFP. "If he is not quickly released, our movement, our leadership and our supporters will react with the means at our disposal."
Another rumour that coalition forces were surrounding Sadr's office in Najaf spread in the afternoon, prompting hundreds of his followers to head to the coalition's Baghdad headquarters in buses and cars, correspondents said.
Their advance was stopped by police units and at least half a dozen US tanks which cordoned off streets leading to the heavily fortified administrative compound.
An AFP correspondent saw one young man lunging at a tank which stopped abruptly without harming him. The crowd cheered the young man and then protestors upturned carts to block the road.
"There were two or three dead among the protestors who threw themselves under American tanks which could not avoid them," said Sergeant Abbas Mohamad.
In similar clashes Friday evening, three Salvadoran soldiers were shot and wounded as they tried to disarm what the San Salvador press described as pro-Sadr militiamen in Kufa, just outside Najaf.
Major Carlos Herradon, spokesman for the Plus Ultra Brigade, said the shooting erupted when the troops tried to disarm the militiamen in the shrine city, a Sadr stronghold, and a group of them opened fire.
He added that one of the soldiers remained in hospital Saturday.
Unlike the mainstream Shiite religious parties -- the Dawa and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- Sadr has refused to take part in coalition-installed interim bodies and has had often troubled relations with coalition troops.
But the weekend's demonstrations marked a sharp escalation of the radical leader's campaign of opposition to the US-led occupation.
The violence came as UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was due to return to Baghdad within two days to discuss the coalition's plans to transfer power to a caretaker government by June 30 and hold elections by the end of January.
US tanks deploy in Baghdad as Shiite radicals take to streets
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