Iraq market massacre leaves 48 dead (coordinated bomb attachs)

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060717/ts_afp/iraq_060717155154;_ylt=AnIFXVCZvbutzjqbsvGKQPSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

Iraq market massacre leaves 48 dead

by Salam Faraj Mon Jul 17, 11:57 AM ET

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A deadly coordinated assault of car bombs, mortar rounds and a shooting rampage by masked gunmen on a market south of Baghdad has killed 48 people believed to be Shiites, including women and children.


Police also found 22 bodies across
Iraq, 20 of them in Baghdad, of men tortured and shot dead in apparent sectarian attacks as the inter-confessional violence that has dogged Iraq for the past months showed no sign of abating.

The latest violence came a day after a suicide bombing in a coffee-shop in the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu killed 28 people.

Major General Abdel Aziz Mohammed, head of defence ministry's operation centre, told reporters Monday that the onslaught on the market in the town of Mahmudiyah comprised "two car bombs, followed by four mortars slamming into the market which were then followed by armed men randomly shooting in the market."

Iraqi security sources said armed men in several cars sprayed bullets at civilians and shops as they drove through the main market street of Mahmudiyah, giving a casualty toll of at least 48 dead and 46 wounded.

[saigon68]

1. "BRING EM ON" shouted the AWOL CHIMPANZEE

[BOSSHOG]

5. They are in the second year of their last throes

Our "christian conservative" neighbors sure can identify solid leadership huh??

[Tight_rope]

2. Where are the hugs, kisses and flowers?

[saigon68]

4. ITS WHACK A MOLE

http://www.jebikes.com/java/WhackAMole/

[uppityperson]

3. kick

the world is nuts.

[Hissyspit]

6. K&R - Please don't let this get lost in the midst of the Lebanon concerns.

As serious as all that is, obviously.

[gulfcoastliberal]

7. Baghdad disintigrating "as mass killings become more common"

Gunmen kill 56 in sectarian attack on Iraqi market town


As mass killings become more common in and around Baghdad, the city of six million people is breaking up into a dozen or more enclaves, which are becoming either solidly Shia or solidly Sunni. Shia gunmen slaughtered 42 Sunni in the al-Jihad district of Baghdad on 9 July after dragging them from cars or stopping them at checkpoints. They were identified by a glance at their identity cards and shot dead.

The streets of Baghdad were largely empty yesterday as people are either too frightened to go out, cannot afford the increasingly expensive fuel for their cars or have fled the country. Many shops are closed, or open for just two or three hours a day.

The poor market towns circling Baghdad have seen frequent sectarian killings in the past three years. But since the Shia shrine in Samarra was blown up on 22 February, individual tit-for-tat killings have been replaced by tit-for-tat pogroms, confidently carried out by dozens of gunmen without police or army interference. On Sunday a suicide bomber killed 25 Shia in a café in Tuz Karmatu, a Turkoman town south of Kirkuk.

As the Sunni insurgents become embroiled in fighting the Shia, there have been fewer attacks on US soldiers, with casualties dropping to fewer than one a day. Sunni political leaders are also increasingly looking to US troops for protection from Shia militiamen. But since neither the US nor Iraqi troops or police can provide security, Iraqis look increasingly to their own militias to secure their districts from attacks.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1183357.ece

I found this report gave scope as to what's really happening over there.

[CuteNFuzzy]

8. It's awful

full blame goes to the Bush administration.