Sunday, August 11, 2013

Hejira

Violence continued in Iraq today and then some.  Though US and western outlets missed it (some reporting six or less deaths), there were at least 13 deaths and and at least 35 injured.  National Iraqi News Agency notes a Jurf al-Sahkar roadside bombing claimed 3 lives and left six people injured, an armed attack outside of Baquba left 2 Sahwa dead (one more injured), a roadside bombing in Haded left two police officers injured, a Riyadh roadside bombing left one of Police Chief Muhammad Juma'a's bodyguards injured, police in Mosul shot dead 1 suspect, a Mosul bombing claimed 2 lives and left three more injured, an Abu Ghraib suicide bomber killed 1 Iraqi soldiers and left ten more injured, a Mosul home invasion left 1 "former army officer" dead, 2 people were shot dead in Mousl, a Baquba bombing left five police officers injured, and a Muqdadiya bombing left six boys injured.  Fu Peng (Xinhua) adds, "In a separate incident, a police explosive expert was killed and two policemen were wounded while the expert was trying to defuse an improvised explosive device in the city of Maqdadiyah, some 40 km northeast of Baquba, the source said."


Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count counts 295 violent deaths for the month so far.  Al Jazeera counts 17 car bombings, 91 people killed and "over 300" left injured.  They note:

The blasts hit public markets, cafes, and restaurants, while violence earlier on Saturday killed two others in the capital, according to security and medical officials.
At Baghdad's Al-Kindi hospital, medics treated a man, apparently a soldier, whose face, chest and arms were covered in blood.
Medics sprinted into the hospital pushing people on stretchers, one of them a blanket-swathed man whose eyes were closed. Another man ran behind the stretcher, weeping as it was wheeled into the hospital.

Yesterday, Iraq was slammed with bombings.  RT notes that the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant have claimed credit for yesterday's bombings.  Imran Khan (Al Jazeera) visits the site of one of the bombings and reports:

After a night of on-air reporting, the morning gave me the chance to visit a bombing site. We decided on the Shia neighbourhood of Shaab in the northeast of the city.
It's typical of the style of Baghdad: tiny apartments crowded above shops, with cafes and restaurants dotted around the streets where young men normally sit to play chess and sip tea.
But in the aftermath of two car bombs, the chess pieces had been put down and ‎brooms had been picked up. The sound of broken glass being swept from coarse concrete grated my nerves, a reminder of the brutality that these people had suffered. 
We were surrounded as soon as we began to film. Words, angry and full of hurt, began to tumble from people's mouths. And for good reason.
The damage from the bombs was immense - the street full of blackened metal, doors hanging from hinges. Even though the cars had been removed I could still see blast marks on the floor.
No one had been killed here, but plenty were injured. 
I visited one of the damaged apartments. Blast-seared walls seemed to close in, and debris was scattered across the floor. A young girl, six years old at most, sat crying on her mother's lap. ‎Her family had very little to begin with, and now they have nothing. Thier lifetime's possessions were consumed in seconds by the explosion.


The violence yesterday was huge but today's violence wasn't minor either.







I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

 The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.




The latest from Third went up earlier this edition:






Kat's "Kat's Korner: Sam Phillips finally comes across" went up earlier today.  Isaiah's latest goes up after this.   The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.






 


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