Terrorists stoke Iraqi anger with latest attacks

By Mohammed al-Qaisi in Baghdad and Ali al-Jubouri
For Al-Shorfa.com
2010-05-10



				[Khalil al-Murshidi/AFP/Getty Images] Iraqi soldiers inspect the site of a bus explosion in south of Baghdad.

[Khalil al-Murshidi/AFP/Getty Images] Iraqi soldiers inspect the site of a bus explosion in south of Baghdad.

In the city of Mosul, Abdullah Khalil, 43, is burning pictures of al-Qaeda leaders, while people around him are chanting slogans condemning the terrorist group.

"They are cowards. They sneak around at night to houses and blow them up," Khalil said. "However, their plan is now over because Iraqi forces will arrest or kill them -- just like they killed their leaders."

The outpouring of Iraqi anger is in response to the series of terrorist attacks Monday (May 10th) that killed at least 45 Iraqis and wounded dozens more.

The attacks targeted factories, popular markets, and checkpoints in Baghdad, Wasit, Mosul, and other Iraqi provinces.

In Babil province, two car bombs exploded targeting workers at a textile factory south of al-Hilla, killing and wounding 120 people.

"Terrorists have committed yet another one of their most despicable crimes by parking two car bombs at the gate of al-Hilla textile factory," Iraqi police said. "While workers were leaving the factory on their way home, they blew them up using remote control, killing 20 workers and wounding 100 others with varying degrees of seriousness."

Anbar police spokesperson Maj. Raheem Zebn said five explosions targeted the homes of Iraqi security forces in Anbar, killing five people, including two girls under the age of 12, and wounding 17 others.

In al-Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber attacked the convoy of mayor Mohammed Youssef, who was passing through to inspect the city's investment projects.

The attack killed three people and wounded 10 others, including the mayor, said police chief Majeed Shehab.

In Mosul, two Iraqi police personnel were killed and six others were wounded in a suicide attack that targeted a checkpoint in the area of Kujli, east of Mosul.

"Iraqi security forces prevented the suicide bomber from reaching a crowd of citizens by shooting him, something that led to the stop of the vehicle in the middle of the street. This is a rare, heroic act," said Capt. Suhail al-Jaafari of Mosul police.

Another car bomb exploded in the middle of a passenger transportation station in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 13 others, including six women and two children.

In Wasit, provincial police spokesperson Lt. Col. Saadoun Eyada said 61 were killed and wounded in double bombings at a popular market in the area of al-Sewara, north of the province.

"The first bombing took place when a suicide bomber wearing an explosives vest blew himself up in the midst of civilians in the market," Eyada said. "That was followed by another explosion of a car bomb driven by a suicide bomber near a commercial store at the market when citizens assembled at the scene of the first explosion."

According to Eyada, seven civilians were killed and 55 others were wounded in the two explosions.

Eyada said Iraqi Army forces managed to thwart a third attack using a large improvised explosive device (IED) planted at the side of the road taken by ambulances.

"The condition of many of the wounded people, including women and children, is serious and unstable. The killers really wanted to show their blind hatred, as they always do, against the civilians," Eyada said.

A few hours after the twin explosions in al-Sewara, Iraqi forces arrested a senior al-Qaeda leader with his aides, who were described as being responsible for the bombings.

"An Iraqi force arrested the one who was responsible for planning the attack. He is a senior al-Qaeda leader, and he was arrested after he was surrounded at a deserted house, together with two of his aides, in the northern area of al-Sewara," said commander of the rapid reaction unit Maj. Aziz al-Emarah.

In Baghdad, terrorists used sticky bombs and automatic weapons to attack a number of checkpoints in different areas of the capital. Nine security personnel were killed and 25 others, including civilians, were wounded.

Baghdad Operations Command spokesperson Gen. Qassim Atta said the attacks took place at al-Ghadeer, al-Amana, al-Jihad, al-Adl, al-Ghazaliya, and al-Yarmuk.

Two improvised explosive devices also exploded in Baghdad, targeting police and wounding eight personnel.

Atta said Iraqi forces thwarted seven attacks, two of them were to be carried out by two suicide bombers.

Atta said the attacks are not proof al-Qaeda is growing in strength.

"Al-Qaeda tries by every possible means to prove that it still exists and that it has not died yet. However, the truth is that it is moving towards its end," he said.

Scores of Iraqis went to donate blood for wounded people in a number of hospitals in Baghdad, Fallujah, al-Hilla, al-Sewara, and Mosul.

"We call on politicians to expedite the formation of government and to start large-scale operations to cleanse Iraqi cities of the terrorists and killers," said Ibrahim Hatimi, a resident of Baghdad.

Sennan Ali, 23, a resident of Fallujah, expressed his outrage.

"They blow themselves up after running out of all of their cards and after the end of their last bets," he said. "Iraqi forces are besieging them as rats, and they cannot do anything other than blow themselves up. Let them go to hell, and peace and paradise be for our children!"

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Reader Comments

2010-09-06 13:03:00

God is sufficient. He is the best supporter.

عبدالمحسن2010-06-13 05:02:00

There is a serious issue, and we need to find the solution and the secret it hides behind. Iraqi streets today are packed with many security groups and forces, but these groups have failed to stop the bombings. There is a strange thing that no one has yet understood; how could the terrorists overcome all the security forces deployed in the streets that inspect all suspect vehicles in the streets? How can they escape from the forces and move from one region to another to reach the place they want to be in, without being encountered by any security element, even though these detachments and checkpoints have the equipment that was imported especially for the remote detection of explosives? But later on, it became clear that they were not good, and there was some deficiency in their performance, or the members of the security forces might not be using them appropriately. Perhaps they did not learn, or they were not trained on how to use these devices to detect the explosives. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that allow the terrorists to pass by the security checkpoints one way or another, because the security forces greatly depended on these devices, and probably the terrorists have invented something that prevents these devices from working, by painting them with a certain substance or something like that. This way, the terrorists ensure that they will pass all the checkpoints and reach the places in which they want to carry out their operations. Besides that, the problem is also that most of these bombed cars exist in the areas of central Baghdad, which are filled with checkpoints of the security forces.

غريب2010-06-10 10:03:00

The terrorists, their filthy activities and their booby-traps have caused many innocent people to become disabled. Many have become infirm and have been left with permanent disabilities. Many of these innocent people became disabled when they were walking along the street or in the market, when an IED or a booby-trapped vehicle would explode near them. Some of them lost their foot, others their hand, or a leg. All of them are now suffering from disabilities, and also from neglect, since their disability has not been treated properly, due to the government’s extreme neglect of these innocent people. This is so because there are no specialized centers for the treatment of people who have been disabled as a result of terrorism, and for their rehabilitation, in order to help them adapt to their new life, so that none of these innocent people would feel that they are missing something, or feel a great difference in their life, which could have very bad psychological effects, due to what they have to endure. The government should contribute to their treatment, because they are innocent people who have been wronged, and their only fault is that they are Iraqis, and that Iraq is their country in which they lived and grew up. The government should help them, and open centers everywhere, especially given that now, the number of disabled people in Iraq has risen and spread in all provinces. These centers should provide them with care and services, and they should be equipped with all modern equipments, with a medical staff specialized in prostheses and their manufacture, and the rehabilitation of disabled people and helping them to use these devices, and to get used to them and to their new life.

ابراهيم محمود محمد2010-06-06 14:02:00

In Iraq, many innocent martyrs were victims of the terrorists' attacks and explosions, because of their cheap ideology and their methods that became known and clear to everyone. With the help of the religious scholars and their Fatwas, people began to hate and fight the terrorist ideology, and every Iraqi became responsible for fighting this ideology and eliminating it from all of Iraq, because all Iraqis had witnessed and confirmed that it is a criminal ideology, through the terrorists attacks that were carried out under the title of Jihad, but they were always against innocent people. That is because terrorists have no conscience, no morals, they are inhuman, they have no feelings, because they are animals and do so little thinking. When the terrorist blows himself up among innocent people, what is the conviction that he has, that he would go to heaven after he killed people; men, women, students and children who were not guilty of anything? Is the killing of those innocent people Jihad, and will the terrorist be rewarded for that and go to heaven?

فاروق2010-06-04 17:03:00

The Iraqi capital Baghdad is once again witnessing various explosions targeting the civilians in the public markets and crowded streets, which resulted in a number of innocent victims. It was to be expected that the terrorists would carry out their operations at this particular time, in response to the operations and the severe attacks of the security forces aimed to eliminate their organization. The problem is that all the security officials appeared on television and confirmed that the terrorists would react to what happened to them, and although they were expecting that, they didn’t direct the security forces to be more concentrated in the next few days, and to beef up the intelligence side, to prevent the terrorists from responding or to make them unable to respond, and to not give them a chance to reach the media again with their explosions. All of that is to save the souls of the innocent people from the terrorists and their operations.

2010-06-02 14:04:00

Terrorists began to hide or run away wherever they saw the security forces, because they know that the security forces now are able to respond to them and to prevent them. The explosions which targeted Baghdad were an expression of the terrorists' anger, because of their morale breakdown. It is indeed a war between the terrorists, with their supporting neighboring and regional countries, and the Iraqi government, security forces and the heroic Iraqi people. The Iraqis have begun to learn how to recognize those who cooperate with terrorism, in order to inform the forces of any strange movements, for their own sake and for the sake of their country.

فليح2010-06-02 14:03:00

The terrorists' latest bombings that targeted Baghdad and other provinces were an expression of their wickedness and cowardice, as well as their failure, because all their latest bombings have targeted only innocent people, the government and the security forces were supposed to set precaution procedures and plans in place, to prevent the terrorists' expected reaction. All the officials of the government and the security forces expected the terrorists' attacks as a reaction to the latest operations of the security forces, which led to the killing of the two most dangerous leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who were considered the leaders of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq. The security forces killed the two members according to a systematic operation that had been planned before; they were killed, and the terrorists' retaliatory attacks were expected, but as usual, the terrorists were not able to reach any official or governmental departments and couldn’t face the security forces, as they did in the past. This issue ended with the imposed plan for the application of the law, which was a successful plan and was able to eliminate terrorism significantly.

هديل2010-05-24 15:03:00

The explosions in Iraq are evidence of the pettiness of al-Qaeda and their inability to face any army. Where is their alleged jihad against the U.S. military? Where are their plans for the liberation of Palestine? Don’t you agree with me that they are planning to kill innocent people only? God will avenge them in this life and the Hereafter.

مهند عبد الكريم2010-05-24 02:02:00

It is certain that terrorists target any human gatherings, no matter what the gathering, or the purpose of this gathering. Terrorists have killed many of the citizens who were gathering on many occasions. Among the most frequent of these occasions are the demonstrations which demand some of the Iraqi people’s rights from the government or a certain party. Terrorists have managed to cause great losses among these human gatherings, and today we see them targeting the human gatherings, especially the sports spectators who come out of the playground to face the traps, explosives, and suicide bombers on their way out. It is sad that such attacks cause great losses among humans, because many get killed in these attacks, and the cause is due to the many and great security breaches among the security departments. The first and last one responsible is the security department and the Iraqi government, which didn’t care in recent times after the attacks targeting the Iraqi people in all its forms. And the main parties are busy fighting with each other over forming a government that represents the will of the strongest party.

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