As American forces conducted a new security sweep in western Baghdad on Sunday, five apparently coordinated bombings in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood on the city's south side killed at least 57 people and wounded 148, an Iraqi government official said.
The above is from Paul von Zielbauer's "5 Bombs Kill at Least 57 in Baghdad" in this morning's New York Times. Also covering the Baghdad attack, Martha's highlight, is Sudarsan Raghavan's "Blasts Kill Dozens in Shiite Area Of Baghdad: Deadliest Assault In Capital in Weeks" (Washington Post):
Multiple explosions rocked a predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad on Sunday night, killing at least 47 people and wounding about 150 in one of the deadliest attacks to target the capital in recent weeks, authorities said.
[The head of a municipal council, Mohammed al-Rubaie, told Iraqi government television Monday that the death toll had risen to 62, the Associated Press reported.]
[. . .]
The attacks began when a volley of rockets bombarded a residential apartment building during a nighttime curfew, witnesses and police said. Then, a roadside bomb exploded, followed minutes later by another bomb strapped to a motorcycle.
Ali Ibrahim, a shopkeeper in a market near the apartment complex, said he saw as many as 10 rockets strike several buildings, spraying debris and glass and setting several nearby shops on fire. As of late Sunday, no group or individuals had asserted responsibility for the attack. "I closed my shop and ran away," Ibrahim said.
And AFP notes this on the attack:
The scale of the carnage will further erode the government's authority and can be expected to lead to increased calls from Shiite leaders for a law to allow neighbourhood militias to patrol and protect their own districts.
Security officials said the attack on Zafaraniyah -- a mixed area inhabited by Shiites, Sunni and Christians -- was designed to cause mass casualties.
The carnage began when a Katyusha rocket demolished a four-storey building containing residences and shops, the interior ministry official said.
Kara compares the dropping of Iraq from coverage (media big and small) to the way big media "lost interest in the effects of Katrina after a few weeks." Olive notes Reuters via Australia's ABC on Ramadi which "gets no attention":
The US military says it has killed 26 rebels after coming under fire from several locations in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
[. . .]
Street-to-street battles continue in Ramadi, a key bastion for the insurgency.
And four Australian soldiers have been wounded by rockets fired into the Green Zone today.
ADDED: Ty noted Julian Bond's "Black America Must Confront AIDS" (Washington Post):
It's been 25 years since we first learned of a disease that was killing a handful of white, gay men in a few of our nation's largest cities -- a disease that later became known as AIDS. But lulled by media images that portrayed AIDS mainly as a white, gay disease, we looked the other way: Those people weren't our people. AIDS was not our problem. It had not entered our house.
We had our own problems to deal with, so we let those people deal with their problem. But that was a quarter-century ago, and a lot has changed. Now, in 2006, almost 40 million people worldwide have HIV, and 25 million are dead. And most of those who have died and are dying are black. That's not just because of the devastation the pandemic has wreaked upon Africa.
The face of AIDS in the United States is primarily black as well. The majority of new HIV infections here are black, the majority of people who die from AIDS here are black and the people most at risk of contracting this virus in the United States are black. AIDS is now in our house. It's now our problem, and we must come up with solutions.
This week, a historic contingent of black leaders will attend the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto to put AIDS in our community at the top of the national agenda. All of black America must do the same. Every African American must stand with us, take ownership of AIDS and fight this epidemic with every resource we have.
And on WBAI's Law & Disorder today (10:00 a.m. EST, 9:00 Central, 7:00 a.m. PST), you'll find out how NYC's Bloomberg tried to stop the 2004 anti-war rallies for political reasons (the GOP convention). E-mails and other internal documents newly revealed are discussed.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
paul von zielbauer
the washington post
sudarsan raghavan
wbai
law and disorder
julian bond
the third estate sunday review
