[Marxism] Iraqis stone cops, US troops after Baghdad bomb blast

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Berkshire Eagle


Iraqis stone police, U.S. troops after blast
By Antonio Castaneda
Associated Press


Friday, May 13, 2005 - BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A car bomb exploded in a jammed
commercial district yesterday, devastating the area and turning the sky
gray as shops and restaurants caught fire in the most deadly of a string
of attacks that killed 21 and included the assassinations of a general
and a colonel on their way to work.

Iraqis expressed growing fury at the relentless bloodshed, throwing
stones at police and U.S. forces who came to the scene of the bombing.
More than 90 were also wounded in yesterday's violence.

The attacks came as U.S. troops were in the midst of a major offensive
near the Syrian border, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad. Fierce clashes
were reported with insurgents on the outskirts of the town of Qaim,
where angry residents lashed out at U.S. forces.

"They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We
have nothing left," one man in Qaim told Associated Press Television
News. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address
the camera.

Families were fleeing in trucks packed with luggage and APTN footage
showed plumes of smoke rising from the town. The U.S. has pounded the
area with airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunfire in the first days
of the offensive aimed at rooting out followers of Iraq's most wanted
militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Five more American troops died in Iraq, two during the offensive
Wednesday and three others when their convoys hit roadside bombs
yesterday in Baghdad and surrounding areas, the U.S. military announced.
At least 1,611 members of the U.S. military have died since the
beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated
Press count.

More than 420 people have died in the two weeks since Iraq's first
democratically elected government was announced.

At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, indicated yesterday that the insurgency could last for many more
years.

"This requires patience," he said at a news conference. "This is a
thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results
tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from
three, four years to nine years."

Scores of Iraqis in Baghdad vented their frustration at the nonstop
violence, beating two Iraqi photographers and throwing rocks at Iraqi
police and U.S. forces at the site of the bloody car bombing near a
market, cinema and mosque.

The U.S. and Iraqi troops fired in the air to disperse the crowd,
according to an AP photographer at the scene.

The blast, which set fire to shops, restaurants and cars, killed 17
Iraqis and injured 81, including women and children, police said. About
15 minutes later, the fuel tank of a burning car also exploded, wounding
three more people.

In all, four car bombs hit Baghdad yesterday, two of them suicide
attacks, said Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman, a U.S. military spokesman. At
least two of the attacks targeted U.S. patrols, he said, but he had no
immediate word on casualties. Police said a suicide car bomber targeting
an American convoy on a highway injured two civilian bystanders.

Elsewhere in the capital, insurgents assassinated Col. Fadhil Mohammed
Mobarak on his way to work at the Interior Ministry, and Brig. Gen. Iyad
Imad Mahdi, who worked at the Defense Ministry, police said.
Al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida group in Iraq claimed responsibility for Mobarak's
death in an Internet posting. The claim could not be verified.

Two more car bombs exploded in Kirkuk, about 180 miles north of Baghdad,
police said. One blast occurred near a police station, killing two
people and wounding two, authorities said. The other occurred at a site
where explosives experts were dismantling a homemade bomb and two
explosive experts were wounded, police said.

The Sunni militant Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for both
Kirkuk attacks on its Web site, claims which also could not be verified.



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Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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