Witnesses said the area was full of shoppers preparing for the Eid al-Adha holiday, which takes place over New Year's.Aqeel Abdul Hadi, a 45-year-old real estate broker, had just stepped out of his car to view a house for sale when the first bomb exploded behind him.
"We turned and we saw traffic policemen wounded and running from the explosion scene. I froze on the spot," he said, still shaken. "People rushed to evacuate the wounded…. Minutes later the second car bomb went off at the gathering of people, killing, burning and wounding them."
Hadi saw a man die in front of him, but the man's three children were not injured.
"They were carrying shopping bags. They were shopping for the new year," Hadi said. "When I saw this, I took my car and drove away as the third explosion happened."
The above is from Alexandra Zavis' "Car bombs in Baghdad shopping district kill at least 26" (Los Angeles Times) proving that, despite the New York Times, a reporter can actually report on the violence in Iraq -- provided he or she does not work for the New York Times.
For further proof, here's Lauren Frayer's "U.S. Soldiers' Death Toll Climbs in Iraq" (AP):
Seven more American soldiers died, the U.S. military said, pushing the December death toll to 90 in one of the bloodiest months for the American troops in Iraq this year. Some 105 troops were killed in October.
President Bush is weighing whether to send thousands more troops to Iraq, but a senior Democratic senator, Joseph Biden, said Tuesday he would fight such a move.
In the most lethal incident Tuesday, three parked cars exploded one after another in western Baghdad, police and Iraqi media reported. The blasts killed 25 people and wounded 55, one physician said by telephone, as he watched the victims being carried into Yarmouk hospital.
And from Reuters:
A spokesman for radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc accused U.S. forces on Wednesday of killing a senior Sadrist official near the Iraqi city of Najaf and called for a government investigation.
The U.S. military said Iraqi army troops with U.S. advisers raided the home of a man who was implicated in a bomb attack on a police chief in October. A U.S. statement said a U.S. soldier shot the man dead after seeing him point his rifle at an Iraqi soldier during the raid.
Also from Reuters, same incident:
U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver had earlier denied any U.S. involvement. He later said that was because the operation was ordered and planned by Iraqi authorities so it took time for reports to reach Baghdad.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
