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Bombs kill at least 80 in Kirkuk
KIRKUK (Reuters) – At least 80 people were killed in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk in a coordinated attack by a suicide truck bomber in a crowded market and a separate car bomb parked on a busy street. Iraqi police said 136 people were wounded in the blasts and warned that the death toll could rise further.
A Reuters cameraman on the scene described carnage after the truck bomb in the market, near an office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan , the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
The explosion scattered bodies across the market, set dozens of cars on fire and trapped passengers on a bus where they burned to death, the cameraman said.
The car bomb exploded in a commercial area called Iskan, near shops and a bus garage, police said. The two blasts came within minutes of each other, police said.
Vehicles burn after a bomb attack in Kirkuk, oil city in North Iraq. (Slahaldeen Rasheed/Reuters)
A truck bomb in the remote northern village of Emerli killed at least 140 people, wounded hundreds more, and dragged a peaceful minority community into the maelstrom of civil war. (AFP/Joe Krauss)
OPERATION MARNE AVALANCHE
South of Baghdad, thousands of U.S. troops swooped on a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq safe haven used to reinforce militants fighting in the capital, the military said.
The operation called Marne Avalanche , aims to stem the flow of weapons and militant fighters into the southern part of Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are already fighting hard to clear them out.
In pre-dawn raids, helicopter-borne troops swept into an area the U.S. military said was an al Qaeda safe haven around the Euphrates river valley, 35 km (22 miles) south of Baghdad.
● Building Up AF Strike Capabilities for Iran?
● Congress Targets Iran Instead of Iraq Today!
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BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq – The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It’s outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.
The Reaper is loaded, but there’s no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.
The arrival of these outsized U.S. “hunter-killer” drones, in aviation history’s first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.
That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected “soon,” says the regional U.S. air commander. How soon? “We’re still working that,” Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview.
The Reaper’s first combat deployment is expected in Afghanistan, and senior Air Force officers estimate it will land in Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring. They look forward to it.
“With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home,” North said.
The Associated Press has learned that the Air Force is building a 400,000-square-foot expansion of the concrete ramp area now used for Predator drones here at Balad, the biggest U.S. air base in Iraq, 50 miles north of Baghdad. That new staging area could be turned over to Reapers.
It’s another sign that the Air Force is planning for an extended stay in Iraq, supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S. ground troops are drawn down in the coming years.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The Reaper, it’s not just for foreign enemies abroad.
The UK ordered two for delivery this year for use in Afghanistan.
On such things as Reaper. Imagine if we spent this money at home…medicine, poverty,…shit, I can’t go on…just when I was beginning to get out of my depression, thinking the tide was turning.
a month to keep our troops in Iraq. Where is money going to come from for expanded war in Iran?
Kids’ piggy-banks? Bake sales? Silent auctions?
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Oh Irony! Former Saddam loyalists in Anbar province are now our allies to fight the Al Qaeda led insurgency in the province. Another illustration Saddam and Al Qaeda weren’t congruous. These fighters are not Iraqi regular troops, but militants with US weapons and money with allegiance to local tribe leaders. The suspected The Sunni factions in Iraq are already supported with weapons and funds from their religious ally Saudi Arabia.
The Anbar Salvation Front (referred to by Iraqi sources as the Abu Risha group, using the tribal name of the group’s principal leader, Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha), uses harsh measures against its captured enemies, Slogger sources report.
The group does not hand over captured al-Qa’ida suspects to the Iraqi police or even to the US military. When a group has concluded that any captive works with the al-Qa’ida militias, the suspect is executed with a bullet to the head.
The political stalemate will continue because of the allegiance in the three regions of Kurds, Sunni and Shia seeking oil share and power. Senator Cantwell (D-Wa) just said the same in her statement on the Senate floor. “We are sending the wrong signal. Staying in Iraq in permanent bases. We are there to privatize Iraqi oil.” She also reminded the Senators of the Wolfowitz statements, Iraq oil would fund the war effort in the coming 2-3 years.
BAGHDAD (AFP) – The parliamentary bloc loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ended its boycott of the Iraqi legislature on Tuesday after quitting the assembly in June in protest at the bombing of a revered shrine.
“The Sadr party hereby announces that its suspension of membership (in parliament) has ended today,” the leader of the bloc, Nassar al-Rubaie, told AFP.
The movement’s 32 MPs walked out of parliament more than a month ago after a second bomb attack on a Shiite shrine in central Iraq, which Sadr blamed in part on the failure of Iraqi security forces to protect it.
… it is unclear how much bearing the move will have on crucial legislation such as the controversial oil law aimed at resolving the country’s myriad religious and ethnic conflicts.
The Sadr bloc has condemned the draft oil law aimed at equitably distributing the country’s oil revenues because it includes a clause that would allow foreign countries to drill under production-sharing agreements.
The government has met Sadr’s demands by agreeing to investigate both blasts, to secure the road to Samarra and to rebuild the site with “manpower from Islamic states,” Hassan al-Sinaid, an MP from Maliki’s Dawa party, said.
“The committee also must set up a timetable for reconstructing the shrines of Ghailani and Kholani in Baghdad and Talha Bin Abdullah in Basra,” Sinaid said, referring to three other bombed mosques.
After the June 13 attack on the Samarra shrine, the Baghdad government announced that the mausoleum would be rebuilt with the help of UNESCO.
But the mostly Sunni city of Samarra (Anbar province) is among the most dangerous in Iraq, and the 125-kilometre (78-mile) highway linking it to Baghdad is littered with unexploded roadside bombs, security officials say.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."