Iraq: 33 dead In Bomb Blast And Gun Attack

Iraq: 33 Dead In Bomb Blast And Gun Attack


Dozens die after a suicide bomber detonates a car bomb and gunmen disguised as police storm a city police compound in Kirkuk.


8:37am UK, Sunday 03 February 2013

The coordinated strikes were on police headquarters in Kirkuk

The attacks were in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  At least 33 people have been killed in a co-ordinated suicide car bombing and gun attack on a police base in northern Iraq.
  
  A car bomb was set off before two militants dressed in police uniforms and armed with guns, grenades and suicide vests stormed and sought to take control of the compound in the city of Kirkuk, police said.
  
  A further 70 people were also injured in the the deadly attacks - shattering a relative calm in recent days in the war-torn country.
  
  Police said there were still bodies trapped under the collapsed debris of buildings following the blast.
  An injured man is stretchered away from the scene of the explosion.
  The attackers struck during the morning rush hour in the city centre, Brigadier General Natah Mohammed Sabr, head of the city's emergency services department said.
  
  In addition to the casualties, the blast caused extensive damage to nearby buildings and vehicles.
  
  The gunmen burst threw the main gates of the police base in the direction of the headquarters block.
  
  They threw multiple grenades, but were killed before they could get there, witnesses said.
  Rescue workers look for survivors among the debris.
  "I saw a vehicle stop at the checkpoint at the main entrance, and the police started checking it," said Kosrat Hassan Karim, who was nearby when the attack took place.
  
  "Suddenly, a loud explosion happened, it was terrifying.
  
  "I saw many people killed inside their cars -- I have never seen such a big explosion in my life."
  
  No group immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack.
  
  Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city, is at the centre of a dispute over oil and land rights between Baghdad's central government and the autonomous northern Kurdish region.
  Firefighters tackle a smoldering vehicle.
  The unresolved row is persistently cited by diplomats and officials as the biggest threat to Iraq's long-term stability.
  
  Tensions between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year.
  
  Militants continue to strike almost daily, and carry out at least one big attack a month.
  
  The latest violence comes amid weeks of protests calling for Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to resign.
  
  Last month a suicide bomber disguised as a mourner killed at least 26 people at a funeral at a Shiite mosque in the nearby city of Tuz Khurmato.
  
  Days earlier, a suicide bomber driving a truck killed 25 people in an attack on a political party headquarters in Kirkuk, which is situated 105 miles north of the capital Baghdad.
  

As I've posted before, it was a lot more peaceful when the Middle East was run by dictators, where religion was controlled and kept within the Mosque..

yes malena , when the U.S. and Britain "invaded "Iraq they stirred up a hornet's nest and for what. !!! Many thousands of people have died in several Middle East Countries, millions in refugee camps, damage to the infrastructure will take many years to repair .

Tony Blair was on the Andrew Marr show this morning, he is trying his hardest to get back into Politics isn't he!!! Anyway, he was looking very healthy , smart , and tanned and insisted that Mali should be helped to stop these terrorists taking control.Why aren't troops from other EU Countries sending troops? Theyv'e got more sense than Cameron looking for Kudos.

Panda wrote:yes malena , when the U.S. and Britain "invaded "Iraq they stirred up a hornet's nest and for what. !!! Many thousands of people have died in several Middle East Countries, millions in refugee camps, damage to the infrastructure will take many years to repair .

Tony Blair was on the Andrew Marr show this morning, he is trying his hardest to get back into Politics isn't he!!! Anyway, he was looking very healthy , smart , and tanned and insisted that Mali should be helped to stop these terrorists taking control.Why aren't troops from other EU Countries sending troops? Theyv'e got more sense than Cameron looking for Kudos.

Blair misses the limelight like the psychotic narcissist he is, and his propensity as 'Peace Representative' is plainly nowhere as well developed as his idealistic 'War Mongering' talent.
Leaders from other EU countries are perhaps more concerned with rectifying their own economies and they are leaving potential threats from Islamic militants to the US and UK to sort out. (Which might be a short sighted view to adopt.)

1. 
   

To vanquish the spectres of the Iraq war, Labour must stand up for
justice


Ed Miliband can draw a line under the Labour Party’s war by opposing plans
for secret courts








Ten years on: protesters take to
the streets of London to march against the Iraq war Photo: Getty
Images






By Mary Riddell

8:22PM GMT 12 Feb 2013


71 Comments




Ten years ago this weekend, more than a million protesters mustered on the
streets of London to march against the Iraq war. A month later, the first wave
of the Pentagon’s “shock and awe” bombing campaign hit Baghdad. Shortly
afterwards, Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled as US tanks rolled into the
capital.


Such anniversaries are a diary of doom for Labour. In May 2003, soon after
Saddam’s effigy fell, the party achieved a lead on the Tories that was not
replicated until this week, when Ed Miliband widened his advantage over David
Cameron to 12 points. Tony Blair’s equivalent bounce, in the brief moment when
the Iraq war seemed won, was quickly drowned in blood and blame. Mindful of
once-devoted voters who denounced Mr Blair as a war criminal, Labour strategists
are dreading the damage that Iraq may yet wreak on Mr Miliband.


Viewed through a 10-year-old lens, Iraq rates as a debacle on every
conceivable matrix, bar the disappearance of a loathsome tyrant. Unwarranted,
unwise and unlawful, the conflict ordained the deaths of 179 British service
personnel and between 150,000 and 600,000 Iraqi civilians. When statistics are
elastic and life so cheap, it is impossible to be precise.


The Blairite dream of reprocessing sectarian rivalries in New Labour’s
democracy factory has failed. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presides over a
system riven by violence and corruption, in which the law is a weapon of the
powerful and citizens are denied basic services. As the Sunni minority regroups,
emboldened by the Syrian war, Iraq hovers on the edge of failed statehood.



None of this is Mr Miliband’s fault, and he has been at pains to say so.
Having distanced himself in the leadership contest, he went further in his debut
conference speech, telling delegates: “I do believe we were wrong… to take
Britain to war.” In the audience, his brother David was caught on camera,
angrily telling Harriet Harman: “You voted for it. Why are you clapping?” Among
the other leadership candidates, only Ed Balls – an adviser to Gordon Brown at
the time of the invasion – spoke out against Iraq, telling The Daily Telegraph:
“On the information we had, we shouldn’t have prosecuted the war. [It] was
wrong.”



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The fault lines in Labour, cavernous in 2003, still run deep. The 139 Labour
MPs who voted against Mr Blair in one of the biggest rebellions ever always
disbelieved the case for weapons of mass destruction and the confected legal
underpinning. Those who voted in favour, several of whom sit in today’s shadow
cabinet, tend to maintain that, had we known then what we know now, there would
have been no war.

Mr Miliband, who has just set up a shadow cabinet sub-committee on liberty
and security, is planning an anniversary “intervention” in which he will
reiterate that Labour was wrong to take the country to war. However mindful his
strategists may be of a humanitarian disaster, they also have an eye on
self-interest. Labour has lost “hundreds of thousands of votes” and yet, in the
words of a senior figure: “Some Labour MPs still aren’t in the same place as
Labour voters.” In other words, they remain unrepentant. If the Iraq anniversary
proves damaging, then the Chilcot Inquiry, expected to report next year, will be
more toxic by far.

Although Mr Miliband and Mr Blair are said to get on well during phone calls
and occasional breakfast meetings, the new leader is rapidly distancing himself
domestically from New Labour. He is likely to cement that impression in his
pre-Budget speech on the economy tomorrow, while his policy reviewer, Jon
Cruddas, last week offered a fierce critique in a speech to the Resolution
Foundation, saying the party had seemed “remote and administrative”. Tomorrow Mr
Cruddas may go further when he launches the Condition of Britain study, run by
the Institute for Public Policy Research.

By contrast, Mr Miliband has had rather little to say about foreign affairs,
deferring largely to Douglas Alexander and the shadow defence secretary, Jim
Murphy, who will tomorrow argue for “preventative” intervention. Mr Miliband,
who is finally planning to outline his foreign policy priorities in a major
speech expected after the Budget, cannot afford for Labour to be made insular by
recession or by the party’s newfound worship of tradition. Nor will he mimic the
swashbuckling Mr Blair, who still senses, in Mali or Iran, another potential
Agincourt at which to fight his “generational struggle” against Islamist
extremism.

In truth, the rule of terror has, since 9/11, been mainly a chronicle of
fears unfounded and atrocities uncommitted. Al-Qaeda is a headless franchise
whose most potent weapon is Western paranoia and whose breeding grounds are the
badlands left to fester or made more unstable by Western wars. Mr Miliband must
set out how, under his premiership, Britain would help make the world safer by
trade and tough diplomacy as opposed to bomb and bullet.

But first, he must, as he once put it, “draw a line” under Iraq. That cannot
be done by disavowals of Blair’s war alone, or by the wringing of clean hands.
Labour’s Iraq legacy has been written not only in blood but also in misguided
statute and failed policies ranging from control orders to 42-day detention of
terrorist suspects to the expansion of the surveillance state.

The latest aberration, advanced this time by a Tory-led government, is the
“Secret Justice” Bill, which creates new legal authority for those in power to
avoid scrutiny. Safeguards imposed by the Lords were quietly thrown out last
week in the Commons by a single vote, leaving ministers potentially free to rule
that, for reasons of state security, suspects may never hear the evidence
against them.

These “closed material procedures” will, unless curbed now, mean that
allegations of torture, rendition and lesser matters deemed by government to
pose a threat to national security will be veiled in state secrecy. When justice
is no longer seen to be done, it is safe to assume that it is not being done.


The Iraq legacy is already being played out in British courtrooms. More than
a thousand former Iraqi prisoners claim mistreatment by British troops and, on
Monday, the case of families of British servicemen who died in Snatch Land
Rovers will begin at the Supreme Court. The possibility that former Labour
ministers will be implicated in future legal actions makes it imperative that
the Opposition crusades against covert hearings.

Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, last week reminded the House of
“the hugely important principle” of “transparency of justice”, and his party
voted, in vain, for the Lords’ protections. Even so, Labour has been oddly
silent on one of the worst outrages of this Government. With the shadow cabinet
divided, no decision has been taken on whether Labour should demand that the
changes be overturned when the Bill returns shortly to the Commons, or if it
should “meekly accept” a measure that would forever diminish the rule of law.


If Mr Miliband hopes to vanquish the spectres of Iraq, this is his chance.
Britain’s precious tradition of liberty and openness may rest on whether the man
likely to be the next prime minister dares commit himself to one-nation open
justice.

Some of the comments

• 
  

• 
  
  
  
  
  evad666
  
  Yesterday 11:44 PM
  
  
  
  
  Why just focus on his war crimes he was also guilty of treason by virtue of
  his sanction of uncontrolled immigration and his failure to consider our
  interests in the EUSSR.
  Let us also not forget the creation of a new branch
  of the legal profession his good lady was involved in.
  World War 2 gave us
  the term Quisling. New Labour gave us Bliar
  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    Recommended
    by 1 person
    
  • Recommend
    
  • Report
    
  
  
• 
  
  
  
• 
  
• 
  
  
  
  remindmelater
  
  Yesterday 11:33 PM
  
  
  
  
  Blair lied to the British people and we went to War on that basis.
  
  If we knew what we know now we would not have gone to War.
  
  Well big deal. How about doing something about it?
  
  Arrest Blair for War Crimes and let the man be dragged through the streets of
  London in chains!
  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    Recommended
    by 1 person
    
  • Recommend
    
  • Report
    
  
  
• 
  
  
  
• 
  
• 
  
  
  
  highheidyin
  
  Yesterday 09:41 PM
  
  
  
  
  At least Gove thinks the IRAQ was was a good idea.
  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    Recommended
    by 1 person
    
  • Recommend
    
  • Report
    
  
  
• 
  
  
  
• 
  
• 
  
  
  
  
  tony_opmoc
  
  Yesterday 09:39 PM
  
  
  
  
  I feel like a Jew in NAZI Germany, in 1933, except that there is nowhere to
  escape. The USA has already gone, and The UK is soon to follow.
  
  When both my Children were old enough to vote, I spent Two Hours Trying To
  Convince Them Of The Principles of Democracy. You Have Got To Use Your
  Vote...
  
  They both said, we are not going to vote for any of these Horrible People,
  and Neither should You..
  
  A neighbour who was extremely well qualified, and my wife and I signed his
  Nomination Papers - and he was the Father of My Daughter's Best Friend....They
  wouldn't even vote for him (which I completely understand)
  
  That is Pretty Sad.
  
  The people who seek power, are the ones least suitable to hold it.
  
  Tony
  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    Recommended
    by 1 person
    
  • Recommend
    
  • Report
    
  
  
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• 
  
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  Mr Andrew
  
  Yesterday 08:52 PM
  
  
  
  
  Mrs Riddell is not the cleverest lady is she. Doesnt she know that people are
  judged by what they do not what they say, when labour were in power the list of
  underhand, undemocratic, hypocritical things they did beggars belief..:A good
  day to bury bad news in the wake of personal tragedy" episode just about summed
  up all things labour. The lies and treachery under Blair and Brown should be
  once again well publicised if only to confirm Labours total ignorance and hatred
  of all things English. Miliband and Balls can say anything they like in
  opposition it means Sweet FA. In power they were single handedly responsible for
  bringing the country to its knees. Lest we never
  forget!
  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    Recommended
    by 6 people
    
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17 February 2013 Last updated at 15:51








Deadly car bomb blasts hit Shia areas in Baghdad





The BBC's Nahed Abouzeid in Baghdad describes the attacks in
different areas of the city

Continue
reading the main story

Struggle
for Iraq

• Balancing act
  
• Exploiting fragility
  
• Iraq's dilemma
  
• Message of hope
  

Several car bombs have exploded
across the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 21 people and injuring
scores more, officials say.

The attacks are reported to have targeted mainly Shia areas in the city.

Security sources told the BBC three explosions rocked the neighbourhoods of
Ourfally, Kiyara and Falah Street in the eastern suburb of Sadr City.

Sunni insurgents linked to al-Qaeda have been blamed for a recent spike in
violence.

In Sunday's attacks, bombs also went off in the suburbs of al-Amin,
al-Husseiniya, Habibiya and Kamaliya, reports say. State-controlled al-Iraqiya
TV said there were nine car bombs.

Some detonated near busy outdoor markets. The nearby al-Sadr hospital was
full of wounded people.

One witness in Habibiya, Jumaa Kareem, told Reuters: "I was buying an air
conditioner and suddenly there was an explosion. I threw myself on the ground.
Minutes later I saw many people around, some of them dead, others wounded."

Hussein Mohammed, who was wounded and saw his car destroyed in another blast,
questioned how the bombers could get past security.

He told Agence France-Presse: "I spent about two hours to enter Sadr City, so
how could this car bomb enter? Where is the security?"

No group has yet said it carried out the bombings.

Some reports put the death toll as high as 37.

Baghdad security officials said officers had defused another six potential
car bombs, three of them in Sadr City.
'Intelligence
chief killed'
Although sectarian violence has decreased in Iraq since the height of the
insurgency in 2006 and 2007, attacks are still common.

Destroyed cars are inspected in
Baghdad's Amin neighbourhood
Tensions have also been building up in the lead-up to parliamentary
elections, due to be held in March.

On Saturday, the head of Iraq's intelligence academy, Ali Aouni, and two
bodyguards died in a suicide blast in the northern town of Tal Afar.

Gen Aouni is believed to be the second prominent Iraq figure to be murdered
so far this year, after an opposition member of parliament was killed in the
city of Falluja in the western province of Anbar.

Earlier this month, at least 33 people died and about 100 were injured in a
spate of car bombings in predominantly Shia areas of Iraq.

Thousands of Sunnis have held regular protest rallies in several cities since
December, accusing the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki
of monopolising power.



More on This Story

Iraq car bomb kills 10 near Basra as anniversary
nears


Ten years after the US-led
invasion, violence is once again on the rise in Iraq
Continue
reading the main story

Struggle
for Iraq

• Marwa's story: 10 years on
  
• Balancing act
  
• Exploiting fragility
  
• Iraq's dilemma
  

A car bomb near the city of Basra in
southern Iraq has killed 10 people and wounded many others, local police say.


The blast happened near a bus station in Garmat Ali, 18km (11 miles) north of
Basra. Earlier, another bomb to the west of the city wounded two people.

Basra is Iraq's main port and has a predominantly Shia Muslim population.


The bombing come days before the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion of
Iraq, when Basra was occupied by UK forces.

Attacks in Basra are relatively rare compared to other regions of Iraq.

Violence in central and western Iraq has increased in recent weeks amid
continuing protests by members of the Sunni minority against the Shia-led
government.

Sunni militants - some with links to Al Qaeda - often target government
officials and buildings, as well as members of the Shia majority.

On Thursday more than 20 people were killed in a series of bomb and gun
attacks in the capital Baghdad.

19 March 2013 Last updated at 17:14

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Baghdad hit by deadly blasts on invasion anniversary





Ben Brown in Baghdad: "An anniversary drenched in blood"

Continue
reading the main story

Iraq:
10 years on

• Marwa's story
  
• John Simpson's memories of war
  
• War
  still casts devastating shadow
  
• The
  spies who fooled the world
  

Up to 60 people have been killed in a
series of car and suicide bombings mainly in Shia areas in and around Iraq's
capital, Baghdad, officials say.

The co-ordinated attacks targeted markets, restaurants, bus stops and day
labourers during the morning rush hour.

Iraq's deadliest day in six months came on the 10th anniversary of the US-led
invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Violence has decreased in Iraq since the peak of the insurgency in 2006 and
2007, but bombings are still common.

Sunni Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda have vowed to step up attacks on
Shia targets and state officials this year in an attempt to provoke sectarian
conflict and weaken the Shia-led government.

Continue reading the main story
Analysis



Jim Muir BBC News,
Baghdad

---

Ten years on from the start of the campaign that overthrew Saddam Hussein and
destroyed the country's military, security and political structures, Iraq's
future as a unified state is hanging in the balance.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is sharply at odds with the Kurds, who have
their own autonomous region in the north. Sunni areas in the west of the country
are in revolt against Mr Maliki's government.

The prime minister, who's from the majority Shia community, is nearing the
end of his second term. Parliament has ruled that leaders can only have two
terms of office, but Mr Maliki is clearly determined to stay in power, and is
counting on the courts to overrule parliament. His opponents, who accuse him of
dictatorial tendencies, insist there can be no solution to the current crisis
while he's still there.

In a sign of concern over the security situation, the
cabinet announced that it was delaying elections scheduled for 20 April in the
provinces of Anbar and Nineveh by up to six months.
Political crisis
Police sources told the BBC that more than 150 people were also injured in
Tuesday's violence, which are reported to have included at least 15 car bombings
as well as several roadside bombings and shootings.

Most of the attacks took place in predominantly Shia districts of Baghdad
over a period of about two hours during the morning rush hour.

The first occurred at around 08:00 (05:00 GMT), when a bomb exploded outside
a restaurant in the eastern district of Mashtal, killing four people and
damaging several cars, according to the Associated Press.

Minutes later, two day labourers were killed by a roadside bomb planted where
they gather every day hoping to pick up work in New Baghdad, a neighbouring area
just to the south.

In the north-eastern district of Sadr City, five people died when a bomb was
detonated beside a police patrol, and three commuters were killed by a device
stuck to the underside of a minibus in which they were travelling, AP
reported.

Another two people were killed by a blast on a commercial street in the
area.

"I was driving my taxi and suddenly I felt my car rocked. Smoke was all
around. I saw two bodies on the ground," Ali Radi, a taxi driver who was in Sadr
City at the time of one of the attacks, told the Reuters news agency.

Continue reading the main story
Iraq's day of violence

• Bomb explodes outside a popular restaurant in Baghdad's Mashtal
  neighborhood
  
• Two killed when a roadside bomb hits a gathering point for day labourers in
  the New Baghdad area
  
• A car bomb explodes in a busy Baghdad market
  
• Three car bombs kill at least 10 in the capital's Shia district of Sadr
  City
  
• Seven killed in car bombing near the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs
  in Baghdad's eastern Qahira neighbourhood
  
• Another goes off near the entrance to the heavily-fortified Green Zone
  
• Suicide bomber in a truck attacks a police base in a Shia town south of
  Baghdad
  
• Another blows himself up inside a restaurant to target a police major in the
  northern city of Mosul
  
• (Source: Reuters/AP)
  

• In pictures: Car bombs bring
  chaos
  

"People were running and shouting everywhere."

The deadliest of Tuesday's attacks appeared to have taken place near the
Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in the eastern district of Qahira. Seven
people were killed there and another 21 wounded, officials said.

Another six people died and 15 were hurt when a bomb exploded outside a
restaurant close to a main entrance to the heavily-fortified Green Zone, which
houses government offices and the embassies of several countries. A plume of
black smoke was seen over the capital afterwards.

Attacks were also reported in the Shia districts of Husseiniya, Zafaraniya,
Shula and Utafiya, as well as the Sunni district of Tarmiya.

A mortar shell landed near a clinic in the town of Taji, north of Baghdad,
killing two people, while a suicide bomber targeted a bus stop in Iskandariya,
south of the capital, killing five people, AP said.

Police also said three improvised explosive devices (IEDs) had been set off
and weapons fired in the northern province of Kirkuk.

The attacks came amid heightened security in Baghdad, which saw new
checkpoints set up and key roads closed, the AFP news agency reported. Soldiers
and police were searching government vehicles which would usually be allowed to
pass uninspected, it added.

Tuesday is believed to have been the deadliest day in Iraq since 9 September
last year, when 76 people were killed in a wave of attacks, some of which
targeted the security forces.

The first blast occurred
outside a restaurant in the eastern district of Mashtal
The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says no group has said it was behind Tuesday's
violence, but the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant umbrella group that includes
al-Qaeda in Iraq, has in recent months stepped up its attempts to revive the
insurgency.

Such co-ordinated attacks are not unusual, but it is assumed that the timing
may have been chosen to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the invasion, our
correspondent adds.

It comes at a time of deep political crisis in the country, with the Prime
Minister Nouri Maliki sharply at odds with a wide range of political forces,
including the Kurds, most of the Sunni groups, and many factions within his own
Shia community.