Bombs Kill 22 After Deadly Day in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Two bombs killed 22 people in northern Iraq on Friday as the government tried to tamp down violence and head off civil war a day after Sunni-Arab insurgents killed 215 people in an attack on Baghdad's Sadr City slum that intensified Shiite anger at the United States.

The blasts in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, involved explosives hidden in a parked car and in a suicide belt worn by a pedestrian that detonated simultaneously outside a car dealership at 11 a.m., said police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri. He said the casualties - 22 dead, 26 wounded - were expected to rise.

In Baghdad, followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to boycott parliament and the Cabinet if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with President Bush in Jordan next week, a member of parliament said. Bush and al-Maliki were scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Amman.

The al-Sadr bloc in parliament and government is the backbone of al-Maliki's political support, and its withdrawal, if only temporarily, would be a severe blow to the prime minister's already shaky hold on power.

Legislator Qusai Abdul-Wahab, an al-Sadr follower, said in a statement that U.S. forces were to blame for Thursday's bombings in Sadr City that killed 215 people and wounded 257 because they failed to provide security. The attack was the deadliest of the war so far.

"We say occupation forces are fully responsible for these acts, and we call for the withdrawal of occupation forces or setting a timetable for their withdrawal," Abdul-Wahab said.

Al-Sadr's followers hold six Cabinet seats and have 30 members in the 275-member parliament.

Al-Sadr also challenged sheik Harith al-Dhari, the Sunnis' most influential leader who heads the Association of Muslim Scholars, to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, that condemned Sunni attacks on Shiites.

The Shiite cleric said al-Dhari should ban Sunnis from joining al-Qaida in Iraq and organize the reconstruction of the Shiite Golden Dome mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Suspected al-Qaida bombers blew the shrine apart on Feb. 22, igniting the sectarian bloodshed.

As funeral processions were held in Sadr City on Friday, several mortar rounds hit the Um al-Qura mosque, headquarters of Association of Muslim Scholars in west Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood, wounding four of the guards, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

In Baghdad's mostly Shiite neighborhood of Hurriyah, clashes between Shiite militiamen and Sunni insurgents armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades broke out near a Sunni mosque, residents said. No casualties were immediately reported.

Three mortar rounds also exploded near the Abu Hanifa mosque, Sunni Islam's most important shrine in another area of Baghdad, wounding one guard, said its sheik, Samir al-Obaidi. A mortar round crashed through the dome of the structure Thursday night, within hours of the Sadr City attack.

In the Shiite bastion, hundreds of men, women and children beat their chests, chanted and cried as they walked beside vehicles carrying the caskets of their loved ones.

Baghdad remained under a 24-hour curfew aimed at stopping widespread sectarian violence. But al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, ordered police to guard the processions carrying victims of Thursday's attacks by Sunni Muslim insurgents in Sadr City to Najaf, the holy Shiite city where they will be buried.

"God is great. There is no God but Allah. Mohammed is the messenger of Allah," about 300 mourners chanted as they beat their chests while walking through the Sadr City slum alongside slow-moving cars and minivans carrying 16 wooden caskets tied to the rooftops.

Once the processions reached the edge of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad, the cars and minivans left most of the mourners behind for the 100-mile drive south to Najaf, a treacherous journey that passes through many checkpoints and areas controlled by Sunni militants in Iraq's so-called "Triangle of Death."

In the well-coordinated Sadr City attack, Sunni insurgents blew up five car bombs and fired mortars, forcing Iraqi leaders into a meeting aimed at containing the growing sectarian war.

The attack surpassed coordinated blasts on March 2, 2004, that struck Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing a total of at least 181 Iraqis and wounding 573. A bombing in the southern city of Hillah that targeted mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits, killed 125 and wounded more than 140 in February 2004.

Shiite mortar teams quickly retaliated, firing 10 shells that badly damaged the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Azamiya neighborhood and killed one person.

Eight more rounds slammed down near the offices of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the top Sunni Muslim organization in Iraq, setting nearby houses on fire. Two other mortar barrages on Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad killed nine and wounded 21, police said late Thursday.

The bloodshed underlined the impotence of the Iraqi army and police to quell determined sectarian extremists at a time when the United States appears to be considering a move to accelerate the hand-over of security responsibilities.

On Thursday night, Iraq's government imposed the curfew in the capital and also closed its international airport to all commercial flights. The transport ministry then took the highly unusual step of closing the airport and docks in the southern city of Basra, the country's main outlet to the vital shipping lanes in the Gulf.

Leaders from Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities issued a televised appeal for calm after a hastily organized meeting with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Al-Maliki also went on state TV and blamed Sunni radicals and followers of Saddam Hussein for the attacks on Sadr City.

The U.N. said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the most in any month since the war began 44 months ago, and a figure certain to be eclipsed in November. The U.N. said citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month, and that at least 1.6 million Iraqis have left since the war began in March 2003.

"Sunni-Arab insurgents killed 215 people in an attack on Baghdad's Sadr City slum that intensified Shiite anger at the United States."
Uhmmmm... Thanks AP for your "reporting". We've had today already "articles" by this QAIS Al-BASHIR. Why are we now relying on ENEMY propaganda? The entire articles are smelling of anti-american bias. If we need FACTUAL reports on terror attacks in Iraq, we better should use the Multi-National Forces or CENTCOM reports as sources.

Regardless of AP bias, we should have taken Al-Sadr and his mosque out long ago. Fighting a PC war to appease the left is what got us into this mess..

and not sending 400,000 troops in instead of 150,000 at the beginning..

Face it Iraq is a failure..as another poster said time to leave and helps the Kurds...keep forces in the area and bomb the hell at any suspected terrorist camps that pop up..but get US troops out now..

3000 US troops dead, 21,000 injured all for a WMD that wasn't near as active as we thought and trying to bring democracy to savage animals..not going to work

It was a noble effort but we fought a PC war with 1/3 of the troops needed

as the government tried to tamp down violence and head off civil war

I play a little game now where I see how far into an article the MSM throws that tired "civil war" crap in there.

This one made it in the very first sentence.

Very good, AP. You're getting even more transparent.

This is what happens when you try and fight a war without actually hurting many people, and being careful not to hurt anyone's feelings either.

i know..but even the media can have a batting average of .001. You can't be wrong all the time. someone posted a list of all the civil war media headlines over the years here once, it was rather comical...

but enough is enough..its been 3.5 years since the invasion..things seem to be getting worse or at least as bad as ever..

but enough is enough..its been 3.5 years since the invasion..things seem to be getting worse or at least as bad as ever..

They're really not worse...they're better than they were in 2004. They're coming to a head. Most of Iraq is calm now. But there is a need for some changes in the leadership. I guess people learn lessons after a first-time election. I've heard so many Iraqis bemoan not having voted for Allawi's party now.

The media has been very successful in distorting the war to the people back home. I've watched them do it for some time now and it disgusts me. They've even been able to influence events here.

This is not a failure, we have not lost and pulling out now would be disastrous.

According to a website I just checked (disastercenter.com),the population of California was about 36 million in 2005 and the number of murders there was 2503. Comparing to Iraq ( about the same population ) terrorist killings are about the same as murders in that US state, aren't they? What would we do about California if the media daily and hourly reported the murder rate for CA.?

"I play a little game now where I see how far into an article the MSM throws that tired "civil war" crap in there."

Nearly 4,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the month of October, with hundreds often killed in one attack; and one of the highest casualy months for Coalition forces ever. There is a civil war raging in Iraq and to deny that is akin to denying the nose on your face. The only thing stopping this civil war from being all-out mayhem on a massive scale is the presence of U.S. troops, who are trying bravely but vainly to stop the warfare between the shiites and sunnis.

"the population of California was about 36 million in 2005 and the number of murders there was 2503. Comparing to Iraq ( about the same population ) terrorist killings are about the same as murders in that US state, aren't they?"

Try nearly 4,000 Iraqi deaths in the month of October alone, and one of the highest death months for Coalition forces yet. All this inspite of over 140,000 of the best troops on earth trying to stop the violence. So comparing the Iraqi civil war with California's murder totals is a bogus comparison. But if your figures are correct, which I sincerely doubt, all that proves is that California is a war zone in and of itself.

"But if your figures are correct, which I sincerely doubt"

Source: United States: Uniform Crime Report -- State Statistics from 1960 - 2005

In 1993 with a smaller population, the murder total was 4096.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/

"Nearly 4,000 Iraqi civilian"
Were does that number come from!? The UN's 3700 dead + the last large attack? The UN number was denied by Iraq.
Even so the UN claimed that of those "civilians" ca. 500-700 were woman and children. The vast majority were military aged men. What are the chances that these "civilians" are insurgents, terrorists and militiamen? Pretty high I'd say.

I believe it could have been done with 150,000 troops. But waging a PC war so as not to offend the left is what caused it. We leveled Germany and Japan and then helped them back up, and look where they are now. Even now its not too late, but a much more aggressive policy is what is needed..

Where are you getting your information? Where did those numbers come from?

{GASP!} Not the MEDIA! Well, that's irrefutable, then. < /sacr>

If there were a civil war going on right under my nose, I think I would have noticed it. The only civil war I've seen is the one in the media's (and their Democrat friends') fertile imaginations.

You keep on watching that media; I'll keep on watching from the 50-yardline. 'K? ;-)

The UN number was denied by Iraq.

Aw, come on! We all know what an upstanding, forthright assembly the U.N. is. They'd never lie, would they? And surely, they've never demonstrated any motive? {wink, wink}

Keep fighting the good fight. You make more sense than most people on this thread do. :-)

I say that it is easy to fight a war by just strapping on bombs and filling cars with explosives. We could have two million troops in Iraq and these bombs will still go off.

What is needed is about two million security cameras all over Baghdad. Every house would be on camera. If a car bomb goes off, you could trace back to the house where the car came from. Then you would go in and arrest everyone who lived in the house (based on surveillance information). Those with bomb chemistry detected on their bodies would be put in prison to await the Iraq justice system.

Civil War? Equally bad things are still happening in Algeria. But Reuters and AP don't have stringers there, milking every violent action and calling our attention to every person killed.

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