Thursday, November 23, 2006
Sadr City, Health Ministry attacked
Security
Up to six car bombs killed 133 people in a Shi'ite militia stronghold in Baghdad on Thursday, in one of most devastating such attacks since the U.S. invasion. A further 201 people were wounded, police said, and the Health Minister said the toll could rise. "Many of the dead have been reduced to scattered body parts and are not counted yet," Ali al-Shemari told Reuters.
The blasts, which were followed by a mortar barrage aimed at a nearby Sunni enclave, came at the same time as gunmen mounted a bold daylight raid on the Shi'ite-run Health Ministry. Six parked vehicles each packed with as much as half a metric ton of explosives, as well as mortars landing in the area, devastated streets and a crowded market in the sprawling Sadr City slum in east Baghdad, Major General Jihad al-Jabori of the Interior Ministry told Iraqiya state television.
The blasts, which were followed by a mortar barrage aimed at a nearby Sunni enclave, came at the same time as gunmen mounted a bold daylight raid on the Shi'ite-run Health Ministry. Six parked vehicles each packed with as much as half a metric ton of explosives, as well as mortars landing in the area, devastated streets and a crowded market in the sprawling Sadr City slum in east Baghdad, Major General Jihad al-Jabori of the Interior Ministry told Iraqiya state television.
Five people were wounded at the Health Ministry, about 5 km (3 miles) from Sadr City, an Interior Ministry source said, when about 30 guerrillas fired mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns into the compound in one of the biggest public shows of force by militants in the city since the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Shortly afterwards, a dozen mortar rounds hit Aadhamiya, a Sunni enclave in mainly Shi'ite east Baghdad. The Interior Ministry said it was not aware of casualties in the attack. The Health Ministry is run by followers of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia is accused by many Sunnis of being behind some of the worst death squad violence in the capital, in which hundreds of people a week are being kidnapped and tortured and their bodies dumped around the city.
COMMENT: It is likely the attack on Sadr City and the Health Ministry , which is run by Sadrists, was a retaliation attack for the kidnappings and killings of Sunnis abducted from the Higher Ministry of Education last week. Today's killings are likely to lead to further sectarian violence and retaliation by the Mahdi Army and possibly its rogue elements. Not only is it likely to raise levels of violence but will also hamper the political process as politicians on both sides will continue to allocate blame which will increase the ever widening political chasm. COMMENT ENDS.
