4 bombings kill 157 people in Baghdad

UDATE: 4 bombings kill 157 people in Baghdad
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By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer 25 minutes ago

Four large bombs exploded across Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 127 people and wounding scores as violence climbed toward levels seen before the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital began two months ago.

In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in central Baghdad, killing at least 82 people and wounding 94, said Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.

A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Among the dead were several construction workers who had been rebuilding the mostly Shiite marketplace after a bombing destroyed many shops and killed 137 people there in February, the police official said.

The market is situated on a side street lined with shops and vendors selling produce, meat and other staples. It is also about 500 yards from a Sunni shrine.

About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shiite Muslim neighborhood and a stronghold for the militia led by radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The explosion killed at least 30 people, including five Iraqi security officers, and wounded 45, police said.

Black smoke billowed from a jumble of at least eight incinerated vehicles that were in a jam of cars stopped at the checkpoint. Bystanders scrambled over twisted metal to drag victims from the smoldering wreckage as Iraqi guards staggered around stunned.

Earlier, a parked car exploded near a private hospital in the central neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and wounding 13, police said. The blast damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.

The fourth explosion was from a bomb left on a minibus in the northwestern Risafi area, killing four people and wounding six others, police said.

Also in Baghdad, four policemen were killed Wednesday afternoon when gunmen ambushed their patrol south of the city center, police said. Six pedestrians were wounded in the gunfire.

U.S. officials had cited a slight decrease in sectarian killings in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown was launched Feb. 14. But the past week has seen several spectacular attacks on the capital, including a suicide bombing inside parliament and a powerful blast that collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River.

"We've seen both inspiring progress and too much evidence that we still face many grave challenges," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters Wednesday. "We've always said securing Baghdad would not be easy."

Meanwhile, to the west of the city, U.S. troops killed five suspected insurgents and captured 30 others in a raid in Anbar province, a day after police uncovered 17 decomposing corpses beneath two school yards in the provincial capital.

The raid took place early Wednesday near Karmah, a town northeast of Fallujah in Anbar, which has been a stronghold for Sunni insurgents.

American forces raided a group of buildings suspected of being used by militants and found explosives inside one of them, the military said in a statement. A helicopter was called in and dropped precision-guided bombs on the buildings, it said.

The soldiers came under fire and shot back, killing five Iraqis and wounding four others, the statement said. The wounded were taken to a military hospital and remained in U.S. custody. Twenty-six other people were detained as well, the military said.

The bodies found a day earlier at school yards in Ramadi, Anbar's provincial capital, were discovered after students and teachers returned to the schools a week ago and noticed an increasingly putrid odor and stray dogs digging in the area, police Maj. Laith al-Dulaimi said.

Ramadi had been a stronghold of Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida fighters until recently, when U.S. forces in the region and the Iraqi government successfully negotiated with many local tribal leaders to split them off from the more militant insurgent groups.

The U.S. military also reported that a suspected insurgent was killed and eight captured in two raids north of Baghdad on Wednesday. Some of the suspects were believed linked to al-Qaida in Iraq and to a militant cell that has used chlorine in car bombings, the statement said.

Separately, U.S. officials announced that last week they found 3,000 gallons of nitric acid hidden in a warehouse in downtown Baghdad. U.S. forces discovered the acid, a key fertilizer component that can also be used in explosives, during a routine search Thursday, the military said.

Iraqi troops also took charge of security Wednesday in the southern province of Maysan, a region that borders Iran and the fourth province to come under full Iraqi security control since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

A ceremony was held in Maysan's provincial capital of Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, and was attended by senior Iraqi and coalition officials including Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie and the British commander in southern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Jonathan Shaw.

Al-Rubaie said that in order for a timetable to be set for the withdrawal of foreign troops, Iraqi forces and local authorities have to be ready to take over. He was apparently referring to calls by some Sunni Arab groups and al-Sadr's Shiite followers to set a timetable for a pullout.

"We should work to create these circumstances in all provinces, in order to revert security to Iraqis and end the foreign presence," said al-Rubaie, who represented Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the commander in chief of Iraq's armed forces.

Al-Maliki was supposed to attend the ceremony but his trip was canceled without explanation.

Iraqis fear "bridge wars" is plot to divide Baghdad; Did US blow "suicide truck bomber" bridge?

Related
Jadiriya bridge bombing is not what it seems
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REFILE
15 Apr 2007 13:59:45 GMT

By Ibon Villelabeitia and Mussab Al-Khairalla

BAGHDAD, April 15 (Reuters) - When insurgents blew up the Sarafiya Bridge in Baghdad, a piece of Yaseen Kathim's past was sent forever crashing into the muddy waters of the Tigris River.

"When I heard it was destroyed, I felt I was hit. It was my bridge. I used it everyday," said Kathim, a 37-year-old doctor, lamenting the destruction last Thursday of the steel span.

But the bombing of one of Baghdad's most enduring symbols was not only an attack on the city's infrastructure. Some residents and officials fear it could be part of a more sinister plot by insurgents to split Baghdad, with a Shi'ite east bank and a Sunni west bank.

On Saturday, a suicide car bomber blew himself up at a ramp leading to the Jadriyah bridge, causing no structural damage.

It is unclear if the two attacks were related, but the U.S. military said insurgents appear to be changing tactics.

"The constant strategy of the terrorists is to look at ways to divide and create terror and make life difficult for the people of Iraq," Rear Admiral Mark Fox, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq told reporters on Sunday, adding military planners were "studying carefully" the two incidents.

"The terrorists are planning to split Karkh from Rusafa," said a senior Shi'ite lawmaker, using Baghdad's ancient names for the west bank (Karkh) and the east bank (Rusafa).

"This has been the plan by terrorists and their political allies all along to try and drive Shi'ites out of Karkh so they can split Baghdad in half."

On the other side of the sectarian divide, parliament speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani, an outspoken Sunni politician, called the destruction of Sarafiya a "conspiracy to isolate the two halves of Baghdad".

BAGHDAD'S "BRIDGE WARS"

Baghdad, a city of 7 million, has been religiously mixed for most of its history since it was founded some 1,200 years ago on the banks of the Tigris River by Abbasid Caliph al Mansour.

Its dozen bridges linking the east side with the west side were once a symbol of Baghdad's diversity, where Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs, ethnic Kurds and Christians lived together.

But since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006, a wave of communal violence has reshaped the city's fabric, carving out sectarian fiefdoms. Sunnis now mainly live on the west side of the river and Shi'ites on the east.

Some talk gloomily of Baghdad's "bridge wars". Although the Sarafiya Bridge was built in the 1940s by the British, its destruction prompted eulogies in local newspapers, as if it was a repeat of the shelling of the fabled Mostar bridge, which became a worldwide symbol of Bosnia's 1992-95 civil war.

Saad Eskander, director of Iraq's National Library and a historian, said blowing up Baghdad's bridges has been a military strategy to conquer and defend the city since ancient times.

Medieval rulers burnt Baghdad's bridges, then wooden planks laid over boats roped together, to stop invading Mongols from sacking the city. The U.S. military, in its wars against Saddam Hussein, destroyed bridges in Baghdad to hinder troop movements.

"Destroying the Sarafiya bridge is an attempt to break Iraq's unity and to polarise our society," Eskander said.

"It is a message that Baghdad will soon become two Baghdads -- one for the Shi'ites and one for the Sunnis."

But for those who share childhood memories of swimming under the 453 metre (l,485 feet) long span as trains chugged along its railway tracks above, Baghdad bridges will never be severed.

"If they think they can split Karkh from Rusafa they are dreaming," said Saadi Ahmed, who runs a money exchange store.

"The terrorists are trying to destroy Baghdad's landmarks to erase our proud history of civilisation." (Additional reporting by Wathiq Ibrahim)

VIDEO: Iraqi Parliament Bombing Caught on Tape

A convenient untruth

Attributing the bombings in Algeria to al-Qaida obscures the fact that this is a continuation of a civil war, not a new front in the 'war on terror'.

April 12, 2007 2:30 PM

George Joffe

Algeria's premier, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, was still outraged by the apparent attack on his life at his offices in central Algiers on April 11 when he appeared on al-Arabiya television that evening. A suicide bomber had rammed a truck into the guard post outside his offices before it exploded, in the first attack in the centre of the country's capital for many years. Al-Qaida, he told his region-wide Arab audience, was responsible for "this cowardly attack, this rejection of reconciliation".

It is, of course, a very convenient explanation, for it means that Algeria, in common with the western world and its North African and Middle Eastern neigbours, is plagued by a transnational existential threat, to which the only meaningful response is force. And, of course, Algeria should know, for it only recently ended a decade-long civil war which broke out after the Algerian army aborted legislative elections in 1991, causing at least 200,000 deaths, because of its fears that an Islamist party would win them.

Yet, that experience highlights the dilemma as to whether the bombings were really part of the global terrorist threat or whether they reflected, as the civil war had done, more localised, purely Algerian problems. One of the major reasons for the civil war was the widespread view in Algeria that, over the previous 30 years, the country's government had betrayed its revolution and the bloody war with France between 1954 and 1962.

The Islamist movement, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), was popularly seen as a more legitimate inheritor of the revolutionary mantle than the country's official single political party, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), and that was why it was set to win the elections - to the detriment of the vested interests of the elite. That was also the reason why the civil war was fought with such viciousness.

The group that was responsible for the bombing of the premier's office last Wednesday, the Groupe Salafiste de Predication et du Combat (GSPC), which renamed itself al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb last September, had emerged out of the conflict in 1997 and has continued the fight ever since, with the same goals, in northern Algeria and in the Sahara. Although it is now reduced to a hard core, estimated at between 800 and 1,000 fighters, it continues its campaign.

But the campaign is local, as it always was, against the Algerian security services and the Algerian state, which it seeks to replace with an Islamic caliphate. Even though it now claims the mantle of al-Qaida - something which Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's number two, confirmed after the group's second attempt to gain such an endorsement last September (the first was made in 2001) - its real agenda has not changed. Even though western intelligence agencies claim that it organises training camps in the Sahara, for which there is little evidence, its real target is still the government in Algiers.

Even the timing of the attack, which was accompanied by another car-bomb attack on a police station in the eastern suburbs of the capital, was determined by local events. It did not occur as part of a coordinated campaign with the suicide bombings in Casablanca the previous day; the Moroccan authorities are satisfied that there was no "external connection". Instead, it was a response to a determined effort by the Algerian army to destroy its redoubts in Kabylia, to the east of the capital, an operation that has been going on for the last two weeks, and to a spate of trials in absentia of its leaders because of their refusal to accept an amnesty offered by the government last year, which had been intended to produce "national reconciliation".

The attack also fits into a pattern of recent attacks by the group, starting last October, which have involved police stations and foreign personnel working for companies in Algeria. Their purpose is to demonstrate that, despite its best efforts, the Algerian government has not been able to subdue the group and that it can continue its fight. Worse still, yesterday's bombing demonstrates that not even the capital is safe, despite the government's claims.

And where does al-Qaida fit into the picture? The suggestion that it acts as a transnational organisation directing violence in Algeria according to a centrally-conceived plan is simply untrue. Events there do not fit into the alleged global threat to western states accused of interfering in the Muslim world. They still address the group's proclaimed national agenda of removing un-Islamic, tyrannical and corrupt government.

However, as a rhetoric of rejection, as an idea, an ideology of resistance, accessible through the internet and by word-of-mouth, al-Qaida's global vision of confronting the west to create an idealised Islamic state instead has become a commonplace throughout the Muslim world and even in Europe itself - a fitting counterpart to the "global war on terror" that has, in large part, helped to foster it and now becomes its bedfellow.

George Joffe is a research fellow at the Centre of International Studies, Cambridge University. Also a visiting professor of geography at Kings College, London University, he specialises in the Middle East and North Africa. George is currently engaged in a project studying connections between migrant communities and transnational violence in Europe.

Explosion rocks Iraqi parliament; 2 dead

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer 18 minutes ago

A bomb rocked Iraq's parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone Thursday, killing at least two lawmakers in a stunning security breach in the third month of a U.S.-Iraqi crackdown on violence in the capital, officials said.

At least four other people were wounded in the blast, which shook a cafeteria while several lawmakers were eating lunch, initial media reports said.

Mohammed Awad, a member of the Sunni National Dialogue Front, was killed in the blast, said Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the party, which holds 11 seats in Iraq's legislature. Another female Sunni lawmaker from the same list was wounded, he said.

A security official at the parliament building said a second lawmaker, a Shiite member, also was killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Apparently concerned that an attack might take place, security officials at the parliament were using sniffer dogs earlier Thursday as people entered the building — a rare precaution.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which is also in the Green Zone, said no Americans were injured in the blast.

"We are aware of reports of an explosion in the Green Zone. We are investigating the nature and source of the explosion," spokesman Lou Fintor said. "No Embassy employees or U.S. citizens were affected."

The attack came hours after a suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River below, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.

Hospital officials said another 26 were injured, and police were trying to rescue as many as 20 people whose cars plummeted off the al-Sarafiya bridge.

Waves lapped against twisted girders, as patrol boats searched for survivors while U.S. helicopters whirred overhead. Scuba divers donned flippers and waded in from the riverbanks.

Farhan al-Sudani, a 34-year-old Shiite businessman who lives near the bridge, said the blast woke him at dawn.

"A huge explosion shook our house and I thought it would demolish our house. Me and my wife jumped immediately from our bed, grabbed our three kids and took them outside," he said.

The al-Sarafiya bridge connected two northern Baghdad neighborhoods — Waziriyah, a mostly Sunni enclave, and Utafiyah, a Shiite area.

Police blamed the attack on a suicide truck bomber, but Associated Press Television News footage showed the bridge broken apart in two places — perhaps the result of two blasts.

Cement pilings that support the steel structure were left crumbling. At the base of one lay a charred vehicle engine, believed to be that of the truck bomb.

"We were astonished more when we saw the extent of damage," said Ahmed Abdul-Karim, 45, who also lives near the bridge. "I was standing in my garden and I saw the smoke and flying debris."

Locals said the al-Sarafiya bridge is believed to be at least 75 years old, built by the British in the early part of the 20th century.

"It is one of Baghdad's monuments. This is really damaging for Iraq. We are losing a lot of our history every day," Abdul-Karim said.

The al-Sarafiya bridge has a duplicate in Fallujah that was built later and made infamous in March 2004, when angry mobs hung the charred bodies of U.S. contractors from the bridge's girders.

"This bridge is linked to Baghdad's modern history — it is one of our famous monuments," said Haider Ghazala, a 52-year-old Iraqi architect.

"Attacking this bridge affects the morale of Iraqis and especially Baghdad residents who feel proud of this bridge. They (insurgents) want to demolish everything that connects the people with this land," he said.

Before the al-Sarafiyah bridge was destroyed, nine spans across the Tigris linked western and eastern Baghdad.

The river now serves as a de facto dividing line between the mostly Shiite east and the largely Sunni west of the city, a reality of more than a year of sectarian fighting that has forced Sunnis to flee neighborhoods where they were a minority and likewise for Shiites.

Baghdad's neighborhoods had been very mixed before the war but hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced since then as militants from both Muslim sects have sought to cleanse their neighborhoods of rivals.

There have been unconfirmed reports for months that Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida in Iraq were planning a campaign to blow up the city's bridges. U.S. military headquarters near the Baghdad airport and the Green Zone, site of the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi parliament and government, are both on the west side of the river.

Also Thursday, the U.S. military said its troops killed two suspected insurgents and captured 17 in raids across the country.

___

Associated Press Writer Lauren Frayer contributed to this report.

Gift of sight for Gaza girl

Bomb victim to get transplant

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

BY JEFF TRENTLY

Ahlam Abuowda was 6 years old when the bombs went off.

The bombs were nothing new -- she had lived her life among Israeli bombs in the Palestinian Gaza Strip. The bombs were everywhere, every day.

But this day, the bomb blast was too close. It burnt her corneas, scarring the tissue in both eyes.

Six-year-old Ahlam was going blind.

Ahlam is 16 years old now. Her vision has deteriorated. She can't see anything farther than one foot in front of her face.

But Ahlam has traveled close to 6,000 miles for a chance to see again.

Dr. Michael Wong, a Princeton- based ophthalmologist, will perform a surgery today on Ahlam that is expected to restore vision in her right eye.

For Ahlam, the world is dark and fuzzy. She gets headaches and struggles with simple tasks.

In Gaza, the bombing that took her vision is part of her daily life.

"You don't know if you're going to be alive the next day," she says through a translator. "You don't know if tomorrow will come."

Ahlam lives in her grandfather's two-bedroom house with her parents and 13 younger siblings. The roof has been blasted off part of the house and there is no heat.

Ahlam has friends who were killed in the bombings, she says.

Life is desperate for the Palestinians who live there. Medical care is primitive.

In Gaza, Wong says, they don't have cornea transplant tissue.

There is no sterile hospital.

"It's been bombed," he says.

Life for Ahlam was mostly spent indoors, away from the violence.

"If she was to remain blind, she'd have no hope to go on," he says. "There is bombing all around her. That's all she knows."

Wong will transplant a cornea -- the clear tissue in front of the eye, "like the crystal of a watch" -- into Ahlam's right eye this morning at the Surgical Center of Central New Jersey in North Brunswick.

Wills Eye Hospital provided the cornea from a 15-year-old girl who died in a motorcycle accident Monday.

Without the surgery, Ahlam's condition would deteriorate, Wong says. The damage could become painful and she would eventually be totally blind.

If the surgery is successful, Ahlam could have the other eye done at a later date, Wong says.

For Wong, the surgery is a routine outpatient procedure.

"This is what I do every day," he says.

But Wong knows Ahlam's situation is unique.

"Humanity has no borders. In a doctor's eyes there are no borders," he says.

Borders were the most difficult thing in getting Ahlam out of Gaza, says Nora Whisnant of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, which worked to bring Ahlam to the United States for the surgery.

Ahlam's village is bombed routinely, Whisnant says. Check points are closed. To get from one place to another you must wait hours in line.

"It's hard to get out," she says.

It took months to arrange Ah lam's visit.

Ahlam arrived in the United States last week. She told Whis nant she couldn't believe how quiet it is here. No bombing. No blasts.

"She is so excited and so inno cent and so naive," Whisnant says.

Ahlam is staying in Bridgewater with an Arabic-speaking host family. When she arrived at JFK airport, the sound of airplanes taking off scared Ahlam, says Suheir Hanna, her American host mother.

"She thought they were going to drop bombs," Hanna says.

For Ahlam, life in the United States is refreshing. She can go outside and not be afraid.

Ahlam wants to learn English and one day be an elementary school teacher in her native land.

"She has lots of hopes and dreams," Hanna says.

And when she gets her vision back?

The first thing she wants to see is the Statue of Liberty.

"Where I live, we are denied our freedom," Ahlam says. "I want to see what freedom is all about."

Contact Jeff Trently at jtrent ly@njtimes.com.

© 2007 The Times of Trenton

© 2007 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.

Deadliest bomb in Iraq war kills 152

By Mussab Al-Khairalla

Reuters
Saturday, March 31, 2007; 12:01 PM

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government raised the death toll on Saturday from a truck bomb in the town of Tal Afar to 152, making it the deadliest single bombing of the four-year-old war.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Kareem Khalaf said 347 people were wounded in Tuesday's attack on a Shi'ite area. There was another truck bomb in the mixed northwestern town on Tuesday, but it was small.

Khalaf said 100 homes had been destroyed in the main blast, which officials have blamed on al Qaeda. The explosion left a 23-meter (75-ft)-wide crater.

"It took us a while to recover all the bodies from underneath the rubble of the homes ... what did they achieve by using two tons of explosive to kill and wound 500 in a residential area?" Khalaf asked at a news conference.

The past week has been the bloodiest in Iraq since the government launched a security crackdown in Baghdad in February aimed at halting the country's slide toward civil war.

Bombings blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda have killed 400 people in Shi'ite areas across the country in the past week.

Car bombs killed nine people on Saturday, police said.

Officials had earlier this week said 85 people died in the Tal Afar bombing, which triggered reprisal attacks by gunmen and police in a Sunni neighborhood of the town hours later.

Officials said earlier up to 70 were killed in the revenge attacks, but Khalaf put the number at 47. He said most of the attackers were police. Much of the force is made up of Shi'ites.

Only a year ago President Bush held up Tal Afar as a beacon of hope for Iraq after al Qaeda militants were ousted in a U.S. offensive a year earlier.

Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker reiterated Washington's support for Maliki's government.

"He (Bush) has been very clear and very determined that he will continue his full support for the government and the people," Crocker said in his first news conference.

"We've seen encouraging signals of progress but we have to keep moving forward."

BLAST OUTSIDE HOSPITAL

In Baghdad, a car bomb outside a hospital in a Shi'ite stronghold killed five people and wounded 22, police said. Four people were killed and 20 wounded by a car bomb in the Shi'ite city of Hilla, south of Baghdad.

Gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying civilian workers employed at an Iraqi military base near Hawija, 70 km (45 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, killing eight and wounding two, police said. Four brothers were among the dead.

Amid fears the country is being dragged to the brink of all-out civil war, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for restraint on Friday, urging Iraqis not to allow themselves to be divided by "evildoers."

President Jalal Talabani said the government was talking to armed groups, although he gave no details. Iraqi officials have said in the past negotiations have been held with Sunni Arab insurgents. Such talks have been preliminary.

"There are many armed groups that have started talks with the Iraqi government," Talabani told reporters without elaborating.

Before leaving Iraq last Monday at the end of his assignment, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said U.S. and Iraqi officials had held contacts with Sunni Arab insurgent groups to build an alliance against al Qaeda.

© 2007 Reuters

Over 100 Iraqis killed in bombing mayhem

by Ammar Karim Thu Mar 29, 3:17 PM ET

Bomb attacks killed more than 100 Iraqis on Thursday, including 60 slaughtered in a popular Baghdad market in the deadliest violence in the capital since a massive US security crackdown.

Two suicide bombers wearing explosive vests walked into Al-Shaab market in a Shiite district of northeastern Baghdad and blew themselves up as shoppers busied themselves buying provisions ahead of the weekend.

They left gruesome scenes of carnage and wounded another 25 people in the market -- a favourite target of Sunni extremists bent on causing maximum casualties -- in experiences that have become daily fare in war-racked Iraq.

The attacks were carried out shortly after 43 Iraqis were slaughtered and more than 80 wounded in coordinated bombings hitting another market in the Shiite town of Khalis, north of Baghdad.

The bodies of victims from the Baghdad market bombings were brought to the Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, a Shiite bastion close to the site of the blasts, an AFP photographer said.

Bodies of men, women and nearly 10 children were lying on the floor of the hospital, he said as medics rushed to cover the corpses and dozens of grieving relatives frantically besieged the hospital searching for their loved ones.

Thursday's death toll pushed to more than 300 the number of Iraqis slain in the worst 48-hour bout of violence in months, fanning fears of all out civil war and savage sectarianism in the country.

Khalis lies in the troubled Diyala province that has become the most dangerous stretch of country outside the capital. Four coordinated car bombings and mortar attacks there struck a market, courthouse and a new army base.

As in Baghdad, the explosions unleashed mayhem, killing and maiming men, women and children during the busy shopping hours ahead of the main Muslim day of rest on Friday, said Ahmed al-Khadran, brother of the town's mayor.

The first car bomb targeted the market, the second blew up near a court house, a third at a new army base under construction and a fourth blew up in an ambulance, a security source said.

At least nine mortar attacks were also reported in residential areas while two roadside bombs exploded in a main street near the market, ripping through security and rescue workers who had rushed to the scene of the initial attack.

The killings came on top of the reported deaths of another 21 people in attacks concentrated around the capital on Thursday and police found 25 corpses of men killed in apparent sectarian attacks in Baghdad.

Just hours before the latest attacks, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose government has appointed investigators to probe the deaths of 160 Iraqis in the northern town of Tal Afar -- issued an emotional appeal for unity

"The Iraqi army is for the whole of Iraq and not a particular party or sect, and is not guided by people close to political affiliations," said Maliki in an address to cadets of a counter-terrorism academy in Baghdad.

"The country is facing many challenges which need a consolidated front in which all Iraqis must participate... Iraqis must not feel that we (as a government) are terrorising them," Maliki added.

Despite Thursday's attack in Baghdad, insurgents have increasingly focused their energies elsewhere to escape the heavily ramped up security presence in the capital where 80,000 Iraqi-US troops have deployed since last month.

But the most brutal sectarian shootings were witnessed in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar on Tuesday when armed men went on a rampage killing Sunni Arabs after a bomb attack killed 85 people in a crowded Shiite district.

Gunmen, at least some wearing police uniform according to witnesses, rampaged through the Sunni district of Al-Wahada killing 70 people after the presumed Sunni suicide truck bomber blew himself up among crowds waiting for food.

Iraq's embattled government admitted on Thursday that police were behind the vengeful slaughter of the Sunni Arabs as soldiers uncovered further bodies of five executed men whom a doctor said were killed in a separate incident.

"We will take legal action against a group of them," Interior Minister Jawad Bolani, himself a Shiite in the Shiite-dominated government, confirmed.

"An order has been issued by the prime minister to investigate the violations caused by elements of the police in Tal Afar," he added.

An Iraqi army source speaking on condition of anonymity said 13 policemen were detained for the mass killings of Sunni Arabs, but a spokesman later said they had been released temporarily to mourn relatives killed in the truck bomb.

Iraq: suicide bombs reach record

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Sat, 03/24/2007 - 20:45.

A suicide bomber in a truck with explosives hidden under construction materials was waved through a checkpoint in southern Baghdad, where he detonated his payload, killing at least 20 on March 24. The attack was the deadliest of a wave of such bombings around Iraq that day that killed at least 47, including many police. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, top US military spokesman in Iraq, said last week that the number of car bombs in Baghdad reached a record high of 44 in February, out of 77 nationwide. (AND, March 24)

On March 23, Iraq's deputy prime minister Salam al-Zubaie, a Sunni who joined the Shiite-led government, was gravely injured in a suicide bombing at a mosque in the courtyard of his home, his chest pierced with shrapnel. Nine were killed in the attack, which came after a statement purportedly by an al-Qaeda umbrella group singled out al-Zubaie as a stooge "to the crusader occupiers." (AP, March 22, AP, March 23) A group called the "Islamic Emirate of Iraq subsequently said in an Internet statement its fighters had "succeeded with Allah's help" in striking al-Zubaie. "We pray to God not to save the life of this inferior traitor who sold his religion and his people for a cheap return," added the statement. Al-Zubaie's bodyguards have been detained on suspicion of complicity in the attack. (AlJazeera, March 24)

The Political History of the Car Bomb

March 24 / 25, 2007

Henry Ford Never Envisioned This

By RON JACOBS

There's a novel by Russian author Ilya Ehrenburg titled The Life of the Automobile that chronicles humanity's relationship with that form of transportation. As any critical observer knows (whether they drive a car or not) the automobile has forever changed the world in which we live, for better and worse. This is an essential point of Ehlenburg's witty and underhandedly sarcastic novel. Mike Davis's newest offering, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb, could be considered a bloody sequel to Ehlenburg's novel. It is, of course, not a novel but a disheartening recitation of incident after murderous incident of death and mayhem caused by lots of explosives packed into automobiles by numerous different groups with just as many agendas.

The title is taken from the carriage bomb set off by the anarchist Marco Buda on Wall Street in protest of the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti. According to Davis, this bomb was the genesis of the "poor man's air force"--a weapon that killed as indiscriminately as the explosives dropped from airplanes in almost every war since the Wright Brothers. The comparison between air war and car bombs is not made lightly here. Indeed, Davis refers to the morality involved in both and constantly reminds the reader of the moral high ground car bombing removes from a group claiming to fight for justice. At the same time, he asks the reader why the same moral outrage the media reserves for car bombings is not displayed when a superpower carpet bombs an opponent with considerably less resource: the US Air Force versus Vietnam, for example.

In what is certain to be a revelation for many supporters of the state of Israel, Davis explains the car bomb's modern origins in the tactics of the Zionist terrorists known as the Stern Gang. This group, composed of men-some who went on to help rule Israel--was ruthless in its application of car bombs. They genuinely did not seem to care who died in the explosions they caused, although they preferred them to be Arab. It was the success of their terror campaign that helped "cleanse" Palestine of Palestinians so that Israelis could take the lands. The Stern Gang's success would also prove to cause what we nowadays call blowback. Indeed, car bombs set off in civilian spaces have been a favorite tactic of the Palestinian resistance to Israel ever since its founding. Davis relates this story, too.

The anonymous nature of the car bomb is what makes it appealing to those guerrilla groups that use them. It is also why they have an appeal to intelligence agencies whose goal is to discredit legitimate insurgent groups. From Saigon, where CIA agents assisted a Vietnamese warlord in his car bomb campaign against Saigon and Hanoi and after his death continued on their own, to Baghdad, where rumors fly daily about which governments are really behind the assorted bombings of that day, the car bomb has been used to manipulate the public and kill the rulers' enemies. Nowhere did this secret government affinity for car bombing have a greater effect than in the campaign of terror unleashed by then CIA director William Casey in Afghanistan. With the general approval of the Reagan administration, Mr. Casey's minions trained, armed and ran interference for the holy warriors of the Afghani mujahedin, providing car bomb technical assistance and materials. Of course, it is the descendants of that same group that Casey's company trained that would eventually hatch the various plots against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--car bombs with wings, as it were. More importantly, those acts have inspired many more such plots and acts, with no real end in sight.

Davis's history is not a politically charged indictment of any particular faction, although he pointedly places blame for the current upsurge in the use of car bombs by Islamists on Mr. Casey and his crusade.. It is, however, a serious look at a military tactic Davis finds (along with most of his reader, one assumes) morally repugnant. There is no single faction to blame here, unless one blames the inventor of the internal combustion engine and those who manufacture cars, since groups of multiple political hues have all used the car bomb at various times. In fact, even criminal organizations have found this weapon useful when they want to kill opponents or whomever happens to be shopping on a particular day. Davis acknowledges the possible reasons behind the car bomb's use by political groups but constantly reminds the reader of the moral complications that use brings to the group and its cause. While reading the book, I could not help but be reminded of the current Washington-led "war on terrorism" and the ridiculous assertion behind that war's supporters that one can fight a war against a tactic. The history detailed in Buda's Wagon makes it quite clear that any such battle is not only pointless, but wrongheaded. The lesson learned from Davis' history is this: in order to fight the tactic of terror, one must become a terrorist themselves. That much is clear no matter whether one is fighting state terror or terror directed against the state.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is forthcoming from Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

Dreams of bombs, bad guys haunt Baghdad's children

FEATURE
08 Mar 2007 11:01:36 GMT

By Aseel Kami and Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD, March 8 (Reuters) - Iraqi children are haunted by dreams of bad guys wielding knives or kidnapping relatives. For some, like 13-year-old Zaman, the nightmares become reality. She was abducted, beaten and threatened with rape.

"Zaman suffers from shaking, nervousness, a stutter and sleep disorder," said Haider Abdul-Muhsin, a psychiatrist at Baghdad's Ibn Rushd hospital who treats children suffering the consequences of war, four years after the U.S. invasion.

Abdul-Muhsin said Zaman was abducted in Baghdad last month on her way home from school. Zaman was not at the hospital when Reuters visited, but Abdul-Muhsin said few children he had treated recently had affected him as much.

"An elderly woman asked her to help her carry some plastic bags across the road to find a taxi. While she was taking her bags back from Zaman, she grabbed her and forced her into the taxi. She anesthetised Zaman and tied her up," he said.

The girl was held in a room with 15 other girls for seven hours before being released by police who raided the house.

"They beat her, they told her that they would send her to insurgents as a forced 'bride'," Abdul-Muhsin said.

Four years of war and now sectarian chaos that threatens to tear Iraq apart has had an enormous impact on children.

Car bombs explode every day in Baghdad. Mortar bombs rain down on some neighbourhoods. Death squads roam the streets and kidnappings are rampant. Kicking a soccer ball around on the streets is like dicing with death.

There are no figures on the number of children killed in violence since U.S. forces invaded in March 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein -- although the United Nations says 34,500 civilians were killed in violence last year in Iraq alone.

Big car bomb attacks at Baghdad's markets often kill children. But even if they are not physically maimed, much of their pain comes from what they see and hear.

Outside Abdul-Muhsin's office, 9-year-old Ghufran was standing waiting as her father discussed her case.

"I have a headache," she said.

Ghufran saw an explosion and while not hurt in the blast, she has suffered epileptic fits ever since.

"Whenever she sees the scene of an explosion or hears the sound of a blast or sees people dressed in black, she has an epileptic fit," Abdul-Muhsin quoted her father as saying.

In 2004, Abdul-Muhsin opened a centre to treat people suffering psychological problems, but he said it was forced to close in 2005 because foreign doctors stopped coming to Iraq and it ran out of money.

He said 70 percent of the children he sees have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Some suffer from night bed-wetting and social phobia, especially when a child sees a person being killed or being kidnapped or he himself is exposed to kidnapping," he said.

NIGHTMARES, TEARS AND SILENCE

Nearly every family with children has stories of nightmares or changed behaviour.

"My 6-year-old grandson told me the other day he dreamt that he was walking with his mother near his house when they saw me heading towards them," said Najat al-Azzawi, 55, a retired engineer. "But a masked man came and snatched me."

Nora, the 9-year-old daughter of primary school teacher Wafaa Hamed, said she is afraid of the dark.

"I dream that a thief is running after me holding a big knife. I wake up and my whole body is shivering, crying for Mummy and Daddy," she said.

Nora enjoys watching a programme called "Space Toon" on satellite television, but it makes her sad.

"I see kids playing in beautiful gardens and parks and I wish I could play and have fun like them, but I know I can't because we have bombs and bad guys hurt children," she said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have launched a major security crackdown in Baghdad, the epicentre of sectarian violence.

While it has reduced the death squad killings, on a typical day anywhere from a handful to dozens of explosions still echo round the city.

"My kids are always afraid," said Nora's mother, who has four children, aged between four and 11. "Even when a door slams they start trembling and shouting 'A bomb, a bomb.'"

"My children used to play outside when things were better two years ago but now they're stuck to the TV, if we're lucky enough to have electricity," she said.

As she spoke, a pair of U.S. helicopters flew low overhead, the thud of the rotors shaking the house in what has become so common that most Baghdad residents barely flinch.

Her 4-year-old son Murtadha burst into tears and put his hands up to his ears to block out the noise. "Mama, afraid, afraid," he managed to say, his voice faltering with tears.

Khalil, 14, saw a body in the street while driving in the car with his father. At first he talked about it often, his father said, but then he went through silent periods. He has also started sleep-walking.

His mother Um Khalil, a university professor, said Khalil and his friends used to talk about their hobbies or whether they wanted to go into science or study literature or come up with some great invention. Now they talk about mortars landing near a friend's house or the father of a friend killed or kidnapped.

"Their thinking has become gloomy," Um Khalil said. "They are not thinking of tomorrow because they know that tomorrow may never come."

Cheney OK after Afghan Assassination Attempt Blast; 23 killed

Update: Cheney OK After Afghan Blast; 23 Killed
Related

• Taliban says targets Cheney in Afghan suicide blast Reuters, 16 minutes ago
• Cheney leaves Afghanistan after visit marred by bombing AFP, 1 hour, 6 minutes ago
• Cheney Unhurt After Bombing in Afghanistan NYT
  
• ---
  

Cheney OK after Afghan Blast; 14 killed

By ALISA TANG, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 48 minutes ago

A suicide bomber attacked the entrance to the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan Tuesday during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, killing at least 14 people and wounding a dozen more. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target.

Cheney's spokeswoman said he was fine, and the vice president later met with President Hamid Karzai in the capital, Kabul, before leaving the country.

There were conflicting reports on the death toll. Provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said 20 people were killed, while NATO said initial reports indicated three fatalities, including a U.S. soldier, a South Korean coalition soldier and a U.S. government contractor whose nationality wasn't immediately known. NATO said 27 people also were wounded.

It was unclear why there was such a large discrepancy in the reports.

Associated Press reporters at the scene said they had seen the bodies of at least 12 people carried in black body bags and wooden coffins from near the base into a market area where hundreds of Afghans had gathered to mourn.

Maj. William Mitchell said it did not appear the explosion was intended as a threat to the vice president. "He wasn't near the site of the explosion," Mitchell said. "He was safely within the base at the time of the explosion."

However, a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Cheney was the target of the attack.

"We knew that Dick Cheney would be staying inside the base," Ahmadi told AP telephone from an undisclosed location. "The attacker was trying to reach Cheney."

Ahmadi said the attack was carried out by an Afghan called Mullah Abdul Rahim from Logar province.

The explosion happened near the first of at least three gated checkpoints vehicles must pass through before gaining access to Bagram.

The sprawling base houses 5,100 U.S. troops and 4,000 other coalition forces and contractors. High security areas within the base are blocked by their own checkpoints. It was unclear how an attacker could expect to penetrate the base, locate the vice president and get close to him without detection.

"We maintain a high-level of security here at all times. Our security measures were in place and the killer never had access to the base," said Lt. Col. James E. Bonner, the base operations commander. "When he realized he would not be able to get onto the base he attacked the local population."

It was not the first attack apparently aimed at a top U.S. official in Afghanistan. In January 2006, a militant blew himself up in Uruzgan province during a supposedly secret visit by the U.S. ambassador, killing 10 Afghans.

Khan Shirin, a private security guard, sobbed near the dead body of his relative, Farvez, a truck driver and the representative of transport association that hauls goods for the U.S. base. Shirin said many of the people killed were truck drivers waiting to get inside the base.

Ajmall, a shopkeeper, said the "huge" blast shook a small market where he has a stall about 500 yards from the Bagram base. Ajmall, who goes by one name, said those wounded in the blast were taken inside the U.S. base for treatment.

One of the dozen U.S. soldiers standing guard near the blast site said that most bodies had been returned to their families, and that some may have died of their wounds at the military hospital.

"It's a bad, bad day," said the soldier, who declined to give his name.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said one of its troops stationed in Bagram, Sgt. Yoon Jang-ho, 27, was killed in the explosion. South Korea has about 200 engineers and medics in Bagram.

Cheney, who spent the night at Bagram, left the base about two hours after the 10 a.m. blast. The explosion sent up a plume of smoke visible by reporters inside the base traveling with Cheney, and American military officials declared a "red alert" inside the base.

Earlier, he ate with soldiers, telling reporters that "breakfast was excellent" but making no other comments.

In Kabul, Cheney was met by armed guards with guns drawn on the tarmac and was rushed by ground convoy to the presidential palace, where he and Karzai walked a long receiving line and past oriental rugs laid out on the wet, stone pavement.

Cheney and Karzai were expected to discuss the surge in violence in Afghanistan. Five years after their fundamentalist regime was toppled, Taliban-led militants have stepped up attacks and Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces are bracing for a fresh wave of violence in the spring.

There were 139 suicide bombings last year, a five-fold increase over 2005, and Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez has said he expects the number of suicide bombs to rise even further in 2007.

In the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, meanwhile, a suicide attacker targeting Afghan police blew himself up, wounding three people, said police officer Abdul Nafai.

NATO-led troops patrolling the city also fatally shot a civilian who drove too close to their convoy, police said, the third such fatal shooting this month. Squadron Leader David Marsh, a military spokesman, said soldiers had given signals for the car to stop but that it kept approaching.

___

Associated Press reporters Amir Shah in Bagram and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

Ashcroft Gagged Nichols From Exposing McVeigh's OKC Bombing Co-Conspirators

Deseret Morning News, Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Nichols says bombing was FBI op

Detailed confession filed in S.L. about Oklahoma City plot

By Geoffrey Fattah
Deseret Morning News

The only surviving convicted criminal in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is saying his co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, told him he was taking orders from a top FBI official in orchestrating the bombing.

A declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, has proven to be one of the most detailed confessions by Nichols to date about his involvement in the bombing as well as the involvement of others. However, one congressman who has investigated the bombings remains skeptical of Nichols' claims.

The declaration was filed as part of Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue's pending wrongful death suit against the government for the death of his brother in a federal corrections facility in Oklahoma City. Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by FBI agents when agents mistook his brother for a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.

The most shocking allegation in the 19-page signed declaration is Nichols' assertion that the whole bombing plot was an FBI operation and that McVeigh let slip during a bout of anger that he was taking instruction from former FBI official Larry Potts.

Potts was no stranger to anti-government confrontations, having been the lead FBI agent at Ruby Ridge in 1992, which led to the shooting death of Vicki Weaver, the wife of separatist Randy Weaver. Potts also was reportedly involved in the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, which resulted in a fire that killed 81 Branch Davidian followers.

Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the cover-up of an order to allow agents to shoot anyone seen leaving the Weaver cabin at Ruby Ridge.

When contacted, the FBI's main office in Washington, D.C., said it could not provide immediate comment on Nichols' claims Tuesday.

Nichols claims that, in December 1992, McVeigh told him that "while he was serving in the U.S. Army, he had been recruited to carry out undercover missions."

In the next few years, the two men hatched the bombing plot. In October 1994, "McVeigh and I stole explosives from a quarry in Marion, Kansas consisting of 8 1/2 cases or boxes containing 229 (2-inch by 16-inch) sticks of the gel type explosive known as Tovex," Nichols wrote, adding that only a small amount was used in the actual bombing.

It was while traveling the gun-show circuit that Nichols claims the two obtained bombmaking knowledge and the materials used in the bombing. One example is that McVeigh allegedly attended a gun show in Knob Creek, Ky., in 1993.

"At this gun show, McVeigh had the opportunity to make contact with about 20 people who were bomb experts. McVeigh told me that he himself had no knowledge about how to construct a bomb, but that he always wanted to gain more knowledge about how to construct bombs," Nichols stated.

Nichols says he knew McVeigh was building the bomb, and in November 1994 he left for the Philippines to get away from the area to avoid being implicated.

"I did not want to be present when and if McVeigh did explode a bomb. Consequently, I left for the Philippines to be out of the country," he wrote.

That statement contradicts findings of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, whose study on the bombing was made public last December. It indicated Nichols had traveled to the Philippines to receive bombing training by a possible foreign terrorist.

Having not heard of any bombing, Nichols said he returned to the U.S. in January 1995. It was later that, in a fit of rage, McVeigh mentioned Potts' name, Nichols wrote.

"McVeigh said he believed Potts was manipulating him and forcing him to 'go off script,' which I understood meant to change the target of the bombing," Nichols stated.

It wasn't until April 18, 1995, that Nichols said he helped McVeigh construct a bomb at Geary Lake. The bomb was comprised of "metal and white plastic" barrels which were filled with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and mixed with nitromethane. In all he estimates between 90 to 92 fifty-pound bags of fertilizer went into the barrels and explosive sticks were placed in the holes of each barrel.

Nichols said he had no further role in renting the Ryder truck and claims he did not know the target, only that McVeigh "wanted to make a statement" by "targeting some structure."

After hearing about the bombing of the federal building, which killed 168 adults and children, Nichols said he panicked when his name came up on the radio and he wanted to turn himself in — but not before hiding evidence, including explosives used in the bombing.

The claims made in the declaration have added yet more twists to the mystery surrounding the bombings. Some familiar with the bombing's history say Nichols' claims seem to indicate the FBI put McVeigh up to the plot as a draw for radicals, but that the situation got out of control and McVeigh became a runaway informant.

After reviewing the declaration, Rohrabacher told the Deseret Morning News that Nichols' claims should be investigated but treated with extreme skepticism.

"I need to caution people to remember that Terry Nichols is a mass murderer," Rohrabacher said. "But if Terry Nichols is beginning to reveal some of the information that's been kept from the public, I'd be very happy about that."

Rohrabacher also expressed disappointment with the FBI and the Department of Justice for not adequately following up on indications there were others who helped Nichols and McVeigh.

The congressman said he no longer is chairman of the subcommittee that conducted the investigation and is "dismayed" that no one else in Congress seems interested in the matter.

Nichols said he has much more information, which he offered to former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004, but is willing to divulge only under sworn video deposition. Trentadue said he plans to seek that deposition of Nichols, but "I expect one hell of a fight with the Department of Justice."

Nichols is serving life in prison without parole after being convicted by a jury for his role in the bombing. McVeigh also was convicted and on June 11, 2001 was executed in Terre Haute, Ind.

Geoffrey Fattah

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E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com

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© 2007 Deseret News Publishing Company

McVeigh had high-level help

Affidavit: McVeigh had high-level help

According to Oklahoma bombing conspirator, ranking officials were involved in the attack

By Pamela Manson
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:02/21/2007 01:03:43 AM MST

Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building and might have changed the original target of the attack, according to a new affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Utah.

The official and other conspirators are being protected by the federal government "in a cover-up to escape its responsibility for the loss of life in Oklahoma," Nichols claims in a Feb. 9 affidavit.

Documents that supposedly help back up his allegations have been sealed to protect information in them, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah had no comment on the allegations. The FBI and Justice Department in Washington, D.C., also declined comment.

Nichols does not say what motive the government would have to be involved in the bombing.
The affidavit was filed in a lawsuit brought by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who believes his brother's death in a federal prison was linked to the Oklahoma City bombing. The suit, which seeks documents from the FBI under the federal Freedom of Information Act, alleges that authorities mistook Kenneth Trentadue for a bombing conspirator and that guards killed him in an interrogation that got out of hand.

Trentadue's death a few months after the April 19, 1995, bombing was ruled a suicide after several investigations. The government has adamantly denied any wrongdoing in the death.

In his affidavit, Nichols says he wants to bring closure to the survivors and families of the attack on the Alfred B. Murrah Federal Building, which took 168 lives. He alleges he wrote then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004, offering to help identify all parties who played a role in the bombing but never got a reply.

Nichols is serving a life sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo. McVeigh, who carried out the bombing, was executed in 2001.

McVeigh and Nichols were the only defendants indicted in the bombing. However, Nichols alleges others were involved.

McVeigh told him he was recruited for undercover missions while serving in the military, according to Nichols. He says he learned sometime in 1995 that there had been a change in bombing target and that McVeigh was upset by that.

"There, in what I believe was an accidental slip of the tongue, McVeigh revealed the identity of a high-ranking FBI official who was apparently directing McVeigh in the bomb plot," Nichols says in the affidavit.

Nichols also says that McVeigh threatened him and his family to force him to rob Roger Moore, an Arkansas gun dealer, of weapons and explosives. He later learned the robbery was staged so Moore, who was in on the phony heist, could deny any knowledge of the bombing plot if the stolen items were traced back to him, Nichols claims.

He adds that Moore allegedly told his attorney that he would not be prosecuted in connection with the bombing because he was a "protected witness."

Moore could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

In addition, Nichols says McVeigh must have had help building the bomb. The device he and McVeigh built the day before the bombing did not resemble the one that ultimately was used, Nichols says, and "displayed a level of expertise and sophistication" that neither man had.

pmanson@sltrib.com

Thailand rocked by 28 bombs

By Seth Mydans Published: February 19, 2007

BANGKOK: At least 28 bombs exploded in the largely Muslim south of Thailand on Sunday in escalating violence that has included bombings, shootings, beheadings and arson attacks in recent months.

Officials said eight people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the bombings, which seemed intended to cause death and injury, and disruption of government services.

Hotels, karaoke parlors, commercial areas and power grids were bombed and two schools were burned, apparently as part of a Muslim insurgency that has taken more than 2,000 lives since the violence erupted in early 2004.

--MORE--

Firebomb attack kills 67 aboard India-Pakistan train

by Elizabeth Roche 38 minutes ago

Sixty-seven people have burned to death after blasts ignited a fireball on a train from India to Pakistan in an attack condemned as terrorism aimed at derailing the South Asian peace process.

Explosives found in two suitcases directly pointed to sabotage, Indian Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav told reporters Monday following the midnight blast on the "Samjhauta (Friendship) Express".

The blasts came on the eve of a visit by Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri, who called the attack a "horrendous act of terrorism". He said most of the victims were Pakistani nationals taking the cross-border train home.

Experts said explosives were used to ignite bottles of kerosene in the train, which was carrying more than 750 people when the blasts occurred near Deewana station, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of New Delhi.

"The intention is clear -- it is an effort to destabilise peace between India and Pakistan. Innocent people have been killed," said Yadav.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf called for a full investigation by Indian authorities but vowed not to let the bloodshed undermine the peace effort between the neighbours, which have fought three wars in the past 60 years.

"Such wanton acts of terrorism will only serve to further strengthen our resolve to attain the mutually desired objective of sustainable peace between the two countries," he said, according to a Pakistan government statement.

New Delhi Television, citing intelligence sources, said the blasts may have been linked to an attack on commuter trains in Mumbai last July that left at least 185 dead and led India to suspend peace talks for several months.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed "anguish and grief" at the loss of lives.

"The culprits will be caught," he vowed in a statement.

Singh later called his Pakistani counterpart Shaukat Aziz and assured action against attackers.

"The prime minister declared India's abhorrence for this heinous terrorist act and reaffirmed our commitment to doing everything possible to ensure that its perpetrators are punished," Singh's office said in a statement.

No group had claimed responsibility for the attack, but one suspect was detained at the site, Railways minister Yadav said.

Survivors said the blasts unleashed a ball of fire.

The carriages had doors for access to platforms, but not at each end. Passengers struggled to break through the barred windows and to open the doors of the moving train.

"There was a huge fire and I saw smoke coming out," said Usman Ali, who was headed back to his native Pakistan. "When I came out of the coach, I saw that the doors of one (carriage) were closed and people could not escape."

Pakistan's Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid said the doors of the carriages had been locked as part of security procedure.

"Most of the deaths occurred because the bogies were locked from inside. Some people jumped out of train after breaking window glass," Rashid told state television from the station at Wagah, the main border crossing between the two countries.

After the blaze, 11 of 16 carriages continued the journey while five, including the two wrecked coaches -- littered with burnt bangles, shoes and clothes -- remained at Deewana for investigators to examine.

"We now have an official count of 67 bodies recovered from the (blast) site," said Haryana state police chief Rajiv Dalal.

A dozen unexploded bottles filled with kerosene had also been recovered, and two other bombs had been defused, said J.S. Mahanwal, the director of the state's forensic laboratory.

He said the mix of kerosene, sulphur and nitrate believed used was different from similar attacks in the past, which had employed a plastic explosive known as RDX.

The new mix led to the fire, which charred bodies beyond recognition.

"It's very difficult to say who the victims were," said Dr. Ved Gupta, the head of post-mortem operations at the hospital in Panipat, five kilometres (three miles) from Deewana.

Distraught and grieving relatives, meanwhile, blamed lax Indian railways security for the tragedy.

"Why couldn't the police check the bags properly at Delhi station? If they had, my sister-in-law would still have been alive," said 58-year-old Haji Nasiruddin, a businessman from New Delhi.

Railways minister Yadav admitted at the site of the accident that there had been a security lapse, but said the giant state-owned rail network relied on metal detectors and did not individually check bags.

The Friendship Express was suspended in 2002 because of tensions following an attack on India's parliament in December 2001 by suspected Pakistan-backed militants. It was restarted in January 2004, when a new peace process was launched.

Foreign capitals condemned the blasts and also urged New Delhi and Islamabad to redouble their work for peace.

Spain furious as US blocks access to Madrid bombing 'chief'

February 15, 2007

Exclusive: on the first day of the Madrid bombing trial, the splits that have emerged between Spain and the US over the War on Terror, which have their roots in the Iraq conflict, are laid bare

Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, who is being held in an secret location by the CIA

Sean O’Neill

The al-Qaeda leader who created, trained and directed the terrorist cell that carried out the Madrid train bombings has been held in a CIA “ghost prison” for more than a year.

Spanish officials told The Times last night that they are furious to have been denied access to Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a Syrian-born terrorist who has been part of the al-Qaeda leadership since the late 1980s.

"This is Spain's most wanted man in the terrorist world - it is galling to know that he is in the hands of an ally and they will not help us," a Spanish official said.

Madrid’s anger became known on the day that 29 men went on trial in the Spanish capital in connection with the bomb attacks which killed 191 people in March 2004.

Background

• Muslims held over Madrid massacre

• Chilling last hours of Madrid bombers

• Madrid relives its train bomb horror

• Comment: Michael Portillo: The terrorists’ other outrage was to make Spain shrink

Setmarian, 49, who lived in Madrid, married a Spanish woman and holds Spanish citizenship, inspired and established Spain’s first Islamist terror cells.

Searches after the March 2004 bombings uncovered documents which appeared to link the terrorists to Setmarian and he his thought to have issued a coded order giving the go-ahead for the attack.

Setmarian was in Afghanistan in late 2001 when the Taleban regime fell and moved with his family to Pakistan where he continued to be active in al-Qaeda.

A tall man with a pale complexion and flame red hair, Setmarian travelled widely and was often mistaken for a Westerner. He was frequently described as having “Irish looks”.

During the mid-1990s he lived in London where he associated with Abu Hamza al-Masri and succeeded the radical cleric as editor of al-Ansar, a propaganda magazine for Algerian terror groups. He also associated with Abu Qatada, the extremist Jordanian cleric currently in prison in Britain.

His suspected role in the Madrid attacks and his knowledge of London meant that he was initially suspected of having played a part in the planning of the 7/7 suicide bomb attacks in 2005.

At the time of those attacks he was still at large in Pakistan where two of the London bombers are known to have received military and explosives training.

Setmarian, who pledged lifelong allegiance to bin Laden and the global jihad, has boasted on al-Qaeda websites of training thousands of foreign recruits at camps where he specialised in bombmaking and the use of poisons.

He was detained in October 2005 as he shopped for breakfast in Quetta, close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Pakistani intelligence agents shot Setmarian’s Saudi bodyguard dead but were under specific instructions to take Setmarian alive.

The FBI had offered a $5 million reward for his capture and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan stated in his recent memoirs that his country has received substantial sums in bounties from the US authorities.

Within a month of his capture Setmarian was handed over to the United States authorities and spirited away for interrogation at one of their secret prisons. His first stop was probably Bagram airbase, near Kabul, but his current whereabouts are unknown.

Setmarian’s wife and three children moved from Pakistan following his detention and are now believed to be living in Qatar where she is reported to be an English teacher at a private school.

Spanish intelligence agents were said to have been allowed to question inmates of Guantanamo Bay about Setmarian in 2002. But access to suspects in US custody was blocked after Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq following the Madrid bombs.

Spain has made repeated requests to both Pakistan and the US to locate and speak to Setmarian about the train bombings but to no avail. The Spanish courts have discovered that they cannot issue an extradition request because the man they want to talk to has not been officially arrested.

Fear of NATO strikes keeps Afghan villagers from their homes

Related
Two unarmed Afghans civilians killed by NATO occupation troops
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AFP

by Nasrat Shoiab Sat Feb 17, 12:52 AM ET

Villagers who fled a small Afghan town captured by Taliban two weeks ago say fear of NATO strikes and being mistaken for militants are keeping them from their homes, even though supplies are running low.

Around 1,500 families from Musa Qala, in the southern province of Helmand, have collected in surrounding areas since the remote town was overrun by Taliban fighters, the provincial refugee head Abdul Satar Mazhari told AFP.

The United Nations said this week it had confirmed there were 600 displaced families and its partner agencies have started ferrying in food and other aid. An average family is said to number six people.

Most of the refugees were with friends and relatives, although some were in camps for people already displaced by the Taliban-linked unrest gripping southern Afghanistan and by drought, officials said.

"We are afraid of bombings and war," Musa Qala resident Akhtar Jan told AFP by telephone from Gereshk, where he and his family were staying with relatives.

He took his family to Gereshk, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) south of Musa Qala, soon after Taliban fighters overran the area on February 2.

"Taliban are there. If they (the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF) attack the Taliban, we will suffer," he said.

The government, wary of more civilian deaths in an area in which ordinary people have already become victims of fighting between militants and the security forces, wants to use negotiations to persuade the rebels to leave.

A tribal elder told AFP last week, however, that the rebels had rejected talks.

ISAF has used precision air strikes to take out two leaders of the uprising but this seems to have failed to dislodge the rebels.

Shopkeeper Haji Nasim said he brought his family to Gereshk the day after the fighters arrived -- according to some reports in their hundreds.

"I came out the second day Taliban took over. I closed my shop and we've nothing to eat," he said, also by telephone from the remote area.

Another Musa Qala resident, Tor Jan, took his family to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, 90 kilometres south of Musa Qala, and said money was beginning to run low two weeks after their departure.

"We haven't got anything," Tor Jan said by phone from a refugee camp. "Our cash savings are running out. If the situation continues this way, we will have to (get) back home as soon as it's OK," he said.

Tor Jan said he was concerned about being mistaken for a Taliban fighter because of his appearance and customs.

Most men in southern Afghanistan wear turbans and beards, as do the Taliban. Many may also be Taliban sympathisers, even though they have not taken up arms against the government and its foreign allies.

"If we go home and bombing starts on Taliban, there is no difference between us and Taliban," Tor Jan said. "They would take us to Guantanamo, Bagram or Kandahar," he said, referring to US military detention facilities.

A controversial deal last year gave authority in Musa Qala to the town's elders, who said they wanted Taliban and British ISAF soldiers to keep out, after fighting there caused severe damage and disrupted normal life.

Defence Minister Rahim Wardak said Thursday that troops were ready for action to take the town but were awaiting the outcome of negotiations.

"We will be continuing to observe developments in Musa Qala but whenever the time is right and we get the approval of the political authorities, we'll launch an operation," he told reporters in the capital, Kabul.

Iran accuses U.S. of backing terrorists who killed soldiers

Thursday, February 15, 2007

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
The Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran — A car bomb killed 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday in the deadliest attack in years near the Pakistani border, and Iran accused the United States of backing militants to destabilize the country.

A Sunni Muslim militant group called Jundallah, or God's Brigade, which has been blamed for past attacks on Iranian troops, claimed responsibility for the bombing, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

An al-Qaida-linked group of the same name has carried out attacks in neighboring Pakistan. Iranian officials say the militants in southeast Iran find a safe haven in Pakistan, but it is not clear whether the two groups are connected. Pakistani officials say they are not.

The blast represented a sharp flare-up of violence in the remote southeast corner of Iran, near Pakistan and Afghanistan, that has long been plagued by lawlessness. The area is a key crossing point for opium from Afghanistan and often sees clashes between police and drug gangs.

At the same time, Jundallah has waged a low-level insurgency in the area, led by Abdulmalak Rigi, a member of Iran's ethnic Baluchi minority, a community that is Sunni Muslim and is present in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rigi has said his group is fighting for the rights of impoverished Sunnis under Iran's Shiite government.

Five of those behind Wednesday's explosion were arrested, Soltan Ali Mir, a local Interior Ministry official, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The Fars news agency reported four arrested and cited officials saying they were not Iranian citizens.

Iranian officials blamed "insurgents" and "terrorists" for Wednesday's bombing — and accused the United States of backing them to sow instability in Iran.

"This was done by a group that gets support from America," the Islamic Republic News Agency said, quoting unidentified officials.

Iran has increasingly raised the alarm that the United States may attack it or try to foment an uprising against the government as the standoff between the two countries has escalated in recent weeks over the country's nuclear program and over the turmoil in Iraq.

President Bush on Wednesday repeated accusations that Iran was supplying weapons to militants in Iraq and vowed to stop the support. The U.S. has also built up its military presence in the Persian Gulf and has vowed action against Iranian operatives in Iraq.

Iranian officials have often raised concerns that Washington might incite members of Iran's many ethnic and religious minorities against the Shiite-led government.

Wednesday's bombing took place near Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, when a car packed with explosives pulled to a stop in front of a bus carrying members of the Revolutionary Guard.

The car exploded, killing 11 guards and wounding 31, the provincial governor, Hassan Ali Nouri, told IRNA. He said one attacker was also killed.

Report: Bomb explodes in Tehran near last deadly blast; police clash with gunmen

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Bomb blast in Iran, police clash with gunmen Reuters, 21 minutes ago
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Bomb explodes in Tehran near last blast

AP 44 minutes ago

A bomb exploded in southeastern Iran late Friday, near the site where an earlier explosion this week killed 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, the state-run news agency IRNA reported.

"Minutes ago, the sound of a bomb explosion was heard in one of Zahedan's streets," the agency said. The report offered no further details, including whether there were casualties.

On Wednesday, a car blew up a bus owned by the elite troops in Zahedan, capital of the Sistan-Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan.