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Dual Bombing in Central Baghdad Kills 57, Injures Over 150    [

    Bomber Kills 60 in Baghdad, Bush to Review Policy
    Reuters

    Tuesday 12 December 2006

    Baghdad - A suicide bomber targeting poor laborers killed 60 people in Baghdad on Tuesday as President George W. Bush prepared to review his unpopular Iraq policy in a video teleconference with U.S. military commanders in Iraq.

    The top U.S. operational commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, said U.S. forces should stay in Iraq until Iraqi forces were ready to assume security control.

    "We can't give in to terrorists. How can we allow that to occur? This is the most important conflict we have been involved in the last 50 years," he told journalists in Baghdad.

    Interior Ministry sources said 221 people were wounded in the Baghdad blast after the suicide bomber lured a crowd of day laborers to his vehicle with the promise of work.

    The 7 a.m. attack took place in Tayaran Square, a popular gathering point for carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers, painters and other workers who frequent the cafes and street vendors while waiting for the chance of some work. Many of the workers who gather at Tayaran Square are poor Shi'ites.

    "A driver with a pickup truck stopped and asked for laborers. When they gathered around the car it exploded," said a witness, who was helping a stumbling survivor with a blood- stained bandage covering his head.

    "They were poor laborers looking for work. The poor are supposed to be protected by the government," he said.

    Calling the attack a "horrible massacre," Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed it on Saddam Hussein sympathizers and Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

    "These terrorist groups are trying to spread chaos by killing and fuelling sectarian strife," he said in a statement.

    The explosion, which sent a cloud of black smoke into the sky, set many cars on fire. Gunfire sounded after the blast.

    Iraq is gripped by violence between majority Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs dominant under Saddam but now the backbone of the insurgency. Thousands have been killed in what many Iraqis fear is a slide toward all-out civil war.

    Quick US Withdrawal

    A new poll has shown that most Americans support a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops, putting Bush under strong pressure to shift course in Iraq, where 2,931 U.S. troops have died since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

    A week after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gave Bush 79 recommendations for changing direction in the unpopular Iraq war, Bush did not appear to be warming to some of its major conclusions as he prepared his own plan.

    He will hold a video teleconference on Tuesday with U.S. military commanders in Baghdad, then meet Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni. He visits the Pentagon on Wednesday.

    The bipartisan report called for direct talks with Iran and Syria and for U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by early 2008, but Bush has declined to embrace either recommendation.

    He has not ruled out a regional conference to help Iraq, involving Iran and Syria, but the White House indicated Iraq would have to set it up.

    A new USA TODAY/Gallup poll published on Monday said 55 percent of the respondents wanted most U.S. troops withdrawn within a year, but only 18 percent believed that would happen.

    A record high 62 percent said the war in Iraq was not "worth it," and a record low 16 percent said the United States was winning, USA Today said.

    Bush met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top officials at the State Department on Monday, with an eye to announcing a change of course to skeptical Americans next week.

 

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    Dual Bombing in Central Baghdad Kills 57
    By Thomas Wagner and Qais al-Bashir
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday 12 December 2006

    Baghdad - Two car bombs targeting day laborers looking for work exploded within seconds of each other Tuesday on a main square in central Baghdad, killing at least 57 people and wounding more than 150, police said.

    Also Tuesday, a television cameraman working for The Associated Press was shot to death by insurgents while covering clashes in the northern city of Mosul, police said.

    Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, 35, was having his car repaired in an industrial area in the eastern part of the city when insurgents and police began fighting nearby and he rushed to cover the clash, police Brig. Abdul-Karim Ahmed Khalaf said.

    Insurgents spotted him filming, approached him and shot him to death, Khalaf said, citing an initial report. Lutfallah had not reported any prior threats against him.

    Lutfallah had been employed by AP Television News as a cameraman in Mosul since 2005. He is survived by his wife, Alyaa Abdul-Karim Salim, a 7-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter.

    Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a member of Iraq's Shiite majority, condemned the bombings and blamed it on Sunni extremists and supporters of Saddam Hussein.

    The coordinated attack in Tayaran Square involved a suicide attacker who drove up to the day laborers pretending to want to hire them, then set off his explosives as they got into his minibus, Lt. Bilal Ali said. At virtually the same time - 7 a.m. - a bomb exploded in a car parked some 30 yards away.

    The blasts shattered storefront windows, dug craters in the road and set fire to about 10 other cars.

    At least 57 Iraqis, including seven policemen, were killed and 151 people were wounded, Ali said. He said most of the victims were Shiites from poor areas of the capital such as Sadr City.

    Iraqis gather on the square early in the morning, soliciting jobs as construction workers, cleaners and painters. They buy breakfast at stands selling tea and egg sandwiches while they wait for potential employers to drive up.

    Khalil Ibrahim, 41, who owns a shop in the area, was treated at a hospital for shrapnel wounds to his head and back.

    "In the first explosion, I saw people falling over, some of them blown apart. When the other bomb went off seconds later, it slammed me into a wall of my store and I fainted," he said.

    Police at a nearby checkpoint fired random shots in several directions. Residents rushed to the devastated area to see if friends or relatives had been killed or wounded.

    Mangled bodies were piled up at the side of the road and partially covered with paper. Two men sat on a nearby sidewalk, crying and covering their faces with their hands.

    "The driver of the minibus lured the people to hire them as laborers, and after they gathered he detonated the vehicle," said another witness, Ali Hussein.

    Al-Maliki condemned the attack, calling it a "horrible crime."

    "Iraq's security forces will chase the criminals and present them to the justice," he said.

    Parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, said the massacre targeted poor people who were trying to feed their families, "turning them into pieces of flesh."

    "God's curse upon those who are behind this," he said in a speech to lawmakers.

    He urged the deeply divided legislature of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds "to find a solution" to Iraq's many problems.

    Tayaran Square is located near several government ministries and a bridge that crosses the Tigris River to the heavily fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the U.S. and British embassies are located.

    About a mile away, two roadside bombs targeting Iraqi police patrols exploded at 8:25 a.m. and 8:40 a.m., wounding two policemen and seven Iraqi civilians, said police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani.

    On Monday, at least 66 people were killed or found dead in the Baghdad area and northern Iraq. They included 46 men who were bound, blindfolded and shot to death in the capital - the latest apparent victims of sectarian death squads.

    A Marine helicopter also made a hard landing in a remote desert area of Anbar province, injuring 18 people, the third U.S. aircraft to go down in the insurgent stronghold in two weeks.

    The U.S. military announced that three American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing north of the capital on Sunday, putting December on track to be one of the deadliest months of the war. At least 2,934 members of the U.S. military have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

    The military relies heavily on air travel to transport troops and ferry officials and journalists to remote locations and to avoid the dangers of roadside bombs planted by insurgents.

    The CH-53E Super Stallion, the U.S. military's largest helicopter, was conducting a routine passenger and cargo flight with 21 people on board when it went down about noon Monday, the U.S. command said, adding that hostile fire did not appear to be the cause.

    Nine of the 18 injured were treated and returned to duty, it said. The military did not give the exact location where the hard landing occurred, saying recovery efforts were under way.

    On Dec. 3, a Sea Knight helicopter carrying 16 U.S. troops went down in a lake, killing four. On Nov. 27, a U.S. Air Force fighter jet crashed in a field, killing the pilot. Both took place in Anbar, a volatile Sunni-dominated province west of Baghdad that is the size of North Carolina.