Posted on 07/16/2005 12:22:54 PM PDT by CHARLITE
A fuel tanker detonated near a gas station south of Baghdad and killed 58 people, a bloody incident police are calling an attack.
The strike -- which occurred in Musayyab, in a volatile stretch in Babil province about 45 miles south of the capital -- also wounded 86 people, police said.
Police say the blast destroyed a neighboring apartment complex and damaged a Shiite mosque and surrounding businesses.
Violence earlier in day Before the tanker explosion, three British soldiers were killed early Saturday in hostile action in southern Iraq and suicide bombers killed at least 10 people, officials said.
The soldiers died in Amara, located in Maysan province, according to spokesmen for the British Ministry of Defense and the British military. It was not clear how the soldiers were killed.
Two other soldiers were wounded and treated at a nearby base.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Michael Moore must be very proud.
Char
Ping
From AP:
Iraq Suicide Blast Kills 54, Injures 82
28 minutes ago
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body Saturday at a gas station near a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad, triggering a huge explosion in a fuel tanker and killing at least 54 people, police said.
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Eighty-two people were injured.
Police Capt. Muthanna Khaled Ali said the attack occurred in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad.
Police and witnesses said the fuel tanker was moving slowly toward the pumps when an attacker ran to it and detonated his explosives. The station is located in the center of town near a cluster of houses, many of which caught fire, the witnesses said.
Gasoline stations in Iraq typically include a number of small businesses selling tea, soft drinks and snacks and often are crowded with people.
Musayyib is a religiously mixed town along the Euphrates River in the "triangle of death," an area that has experienced a large number of kidnappings and killings of Shitte Muslims traveling between Baghdad and the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.
Suicide bomber truck kills 55 in Iraq
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber in a fuel truck killed 55 people in a town south of Baghdad on Sunday, the latest in a series of spectacular guerrilla attacks to rattle Iraq.
The bomb, which police said exploded near a Shi'ite mosque and market, also wounded 82 people. It followed several attacks which killed at least 16 people, including three British soldiers, on Saturday.
The frenzy of suicide attacks suggests the government still has a long way to go before stamping out such attacks, which officials say is the biggest security threat to Iraq.
A suicide bomber in a car hit the Doura district in south Baghdad, killing three civilians and two policemen, a police source said.
Violence also erupted near the northern city of Mosul. A suicide bomber strapped with explosives attacked a police station, killing four policemen, police said.
Ten militants blew themselves up across Baghdad on Friday and another attacked Iskindiriya, south of the capital, killing at least 32 people, police said.
In Amara in southeast Iraq, three British soldiers died in what the Ministry of Defense in London said was a suspected roadside bomb. It said the deaths brought to 92 the number of British soldiers who have died in Iraq, including 53 killed in action.
A little-known Iraqi insurgent group said in a Web statement that it was behind the killing of the British soldiers in southern Iraq on Saturday.
"Thank God, this morning ... three British soldiers were killed and at least three others were injured by exploding a package by their patrol in the Maysan province," the group, calling itself the Imam Hussein Brigades, said.
The statement was posted on a site used by the main Iraqi insurgent groups, including the al Qaeda group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The name suggested it was a Shi'ite group.
The group said it also killed an Iraqi judge in the town of Nassiriya.
Sunni Arab insurgents are leading a campaign of suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings in a bid to topple Iraq's Shi'ite-led government backed by the United States.
In Baghdad, tense officers manned extra police checkpoints throughout the capital, Reuters journalists and drivers reported, after the series of blasts on Friday Al Qaeda described as an offensive to seize control of the city.
SUICIDE ATTACKS CHALLENGE GOVERNMENT
Suicide bombers have consistently undermined government promises that January elections would pacify the country, where violence has raised fears Iraq could slide toward civil war.
Militants, driving cars and blending in with the population, can strike without detection by security forces, who themselves have lost hundreds of comrades in the attacks.
Al Qaeda's Iraq wing, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, boasted that the attacks had given it control of the capital, but there was no sign of militants in the streets.
"Through the day and the night, Baghdad rang with the music of the mujahideen's bullets and the prayers of the martyrs," it said in an Internet statement.
"Our mujahideen now control the streets," it said. "Our sheikh Abu Musab has urged us to intensify our attacks until America is defeated ... and we will continue in our jihad."
Friday's suicide car bombs followed a thwarted triple suicide attack at a gate to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone government compound on Thursday. A suicide car bomb on Wednesday near a U.S. patrol killed 27 people, mostly Iraqi children.
Suicide bombs, orchestrated by groups of mainly foreigners like Zarqawi's, have increased sharply since the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government took power in April.
U.S. generals have said the situation is improving. But Friday's 10 bombs in a day in Baghdad compares with just six countrywide for the entire previous week, a figure a U.S. spokesman had said was the lowest in 11 weeks.
In Samarra, in the central Sunni heartland, locals reported that U.S. troops and Iraqi police had imposed a curfew, ordering residents to stay in their homes after two civilians were killed by gunmen outside a U.S. base.
On the diplomatic front, Iraqi's Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari arrived in Iran for the first visit in decades by a leader of Iraq to its Shi'ite neighbor and former foe.
Jaafari's trip is seen as a historic opportunity to mend ties with a country that Iraq fought for eight years under Saddam. But too quick a rapprochement risks alienating both the United States and Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who are suspicious of Jaafari's Shi'ite-led government's ties to Shi'ite Iran.
Where are the explosives coming from? How about taking out the factory no matter what country it is in?
I guess the jugheads down at Amnasty Int'l don't have an opinion about this since they haven't said anything about their terrorist pals murdering 58 people.
Is there anybody crazier and more insane than the Islamofascists? Jeesh.
These people are truly evil! NUKE MECCA NOW!!
In many articles about the London attacks I've read Muslims asking "Why aren't there these kinds of reactions when Muslims are blown up?"
I think the answer is that we see the Muslims blowing up other Muslims, and we recall all those liberals nagging us about "understanding" the terrorists, that they have "reasons".
We have lost blood and treasure for over a decade SAVING Muslims from each other and Christians, and what do we get for it? Muslims attacking us and each other.
I think part of the non-reaction to Middle Easterners getting blown up is that we can't understand, and libs and Muslims keep telling us there is something we don't grasp about this. But the main reason, I think, is because we see so much of this barbarism that in our Non-Judgmental Multi-Culti New Age World we're not supposed to judge how other societies behave if it's not in line with our own standards.
We KNOW Londoners are ALL horrified at those bombings because we felt the same way--we can relate to them on that level. Can Muslims honestly say they ALL feel the same horror at dead Muslims, when it's Muslims who are perpetrating those horrors on Muslims?
Plus all the other liberal leftist demoncRAT H'weirdo types.
Black market. Trainloads of such explosives are manufactured each year around the world and some gets into the black market. Gun running is a huge business.
I don't even see muslims getting angry about muslims blowing up muslims. If they don't care, why should I?
BBC making it out like the TERRORIST accidentally detonated his explosives near the fuel tanker! Incredible!
"It seems the bomb caused a nearby fuel tanker to explode."
If only the BBC took this stance with US and UK soldiers who have killed innocents accidentally in the course of bringing freedom to millions.
Putting bras on prisoners heads, though, is out-and-out Nazi stuff; killing--KILLING--human beings is an unfortunate accident.
So I guess the BBC are treating this like a Three's Company episode--"OHH! You didn't mean to blow all those people up! A tanker got in the way of your little demonstration against the white imperialists!"
Get used to it. Bush has already told us that this war on terrorism will last for decades. We defeated the Axis powers in less time. But defeating a bunch of inbred psychopaths is going to take decades.
None of the families I know with men in this war want to re-up to die in this politically hamstrung quagmire. They are willing to fight, they are willing to die if necessary, but they are not going to be cannon fodder for politicians in a politically hamstrung war. We will sacrifice our sons for freedom, not for political capital.
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