News & Politics - Ramadi bombing kills 18, mostly children

Lexis · 02-27-2007, 10:17 AM

Quote:

A car bomb exploded Tuesday near a park popular with young soccer players, killing at least 18 boys in a city west of Baghdad known as a center of the Sunni insurgency, police said.

The bomb-rigged car blew apart in central Ramadi late Tuesday afternoon while the boys were playing, and police said those killed were ages 10 to 15. The attack was also reported on Iraqi state television. The Interior Ministry did not immediately comment.

Young people are often caught in
Iraq's daily bloodshed. On Sunday, more than 40 people, mostly college students, were killed in a bombing outside a mostly Shiite college in Baghdad.

In July 2005, a suicide bombing in Baghdad killed 27 people, including 18 children and an American soldier.

Quote:

The three soldiers killed Tuesday, assigned to a unit based in the capital, were killed by an improvised explosive device, a makeshift mine that is the deadliest killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Quote:

raqi authorities, meanwhile, have arrested a suspect in the attempted assassination of Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, an aide said.

The aide said the arrest was made after reviewing security camera video from Monday's blast, which ripped through an awards ceremony at the ministry of public works and killed at least 10 people. Abdul-Mahdi was injured.

The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

The bomb was planted under a chair in the first row of the meeting hall — about 6 feet from the vice president, the aide said. Police initially thought it was hidden under a speakers' podium.

"Investigations are being done to figure out how the attack was planned," Abdul-Mahdi told Furat television. Abdul-Mahdi is one of two vice presidents. The other, Tariq al-Hashemi, is Sunni.

Ramadi bombing kills 18, mostly children - Yahoo! News

All this in the past few days, plus the President being taken to Jordan after passing out. I don't know how the Iraqi people are managing to cope with all this - its all so clearly unstable.

We also had the tragic attack on Bagram airbase in Afghanistan where 23 people died in an attack while Cheney was on the base.

Does anyone see a way out of this mess?

**sunnykerr** · 02-27-2007, 10:42 AM

Apparently, it's invading Iran.

ceilirose · 02-27-2007, 10:54 AM

I don't know. I'm very pessimistic about this whole mess. Last night Laura Bush was complaining about the press never reporting about the good things in Iraq - only the one bombing per day. As if that's the extent of the horror over there.

Cynically I think once the elections in '08 get closer than those politicians who have supported Bush and want to keep their office will finally do "something." Or decide that yes..the Senate is there to debate the whole issue of Iraq and provide oversight to the Executive Branch.

Lexis · 02-27-2007, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Amid conflicting reports over what happened in the volatile western city, the U.S. military said its soldiers had carried out a controlled explosion in Ramadi, also near a soccer field, that slightly wounded 30 people, including nine children.

"I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," Major Jeff Pool, a spokesman for U.S. forces in western Anbar province, told Reuters. The wounded had cuts and bruises, he said.

The U.S. military often carries out controlled blasts in
Iraq to destroy captured weapons or unexploded bombs.

Pool said the controlled blast in Ramadi was "stronger than we had expected." He said it was carried out in the courtyard of a building where bags of explosives had been found. Windows from a nearby building were blown out, causing the wounds.

U.S. forces went to the site and helped evacuate the wounded, said Pool.

Two Iraqi police sources said 18 people had been killed in the blast they described. One, a colonel in Ramadi who declined to be identified, said a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb.

He put the time of the explosion at about 5 p.m. The controlled U.S. blast was at 5:34 p.m., Pool said.

Tribal leader Hamid Farhan al-Hays from Ramadi told Iraqiya state television 12 children and six women were killed.

Conflicting reports over blast in Iraqi city - Yahoo! News

Could the police really be so inept that they are confusing these two incidents? I mean, its a big leap from people injured by an American controlled explosion to 18 people killed by a car bomb.

If they are getting confused, it doesn't bode well for the future of Iraq but at least it'll mean these 18 are not dead.


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