More than 60 Iraqis were killed and scores more were wounded in a wave of bombings and shootings across Iraq today that targeted Iraqi security forces and civilians, primarily Shia. The bombings took place in Baghdad, Hillah, Balad, and Mosul. From Reuters:
At least 32 people were killed in blasts in Baghdad where 10 explosions tore through mainly Shi’ite neighborhoods during rush hour and other attacks targeted police patrols, commuters and crowds gathered in shopping areas….
In Thursday’s violence, one car bomb in the capital killed at least nine people and wounded 27 in the upmarket Karrada neighborhood, hurling shrapnel into the next street and blowing out glass from nearby buildings.
Witnesses saw at four wrecked cars full of shrapnel and bloodied seats near an ice-cream shop at the site of another blast.
In at least three Shi’ite neighborhoods in Baghdad, nine policemen were killed, and in the capital’s northwestern Kadhimiya district, a car bomb killed six people when it struck a street lined with restaurants.
In the biggest attack outside the capital, a car bomb killed seven people and wounded 33 in the town of Balad, north of Baghdad.
Today’s attacks were clearly a show of force by al Qaeda in Iraq. The terror group is demonstrating that it can coordinate simultaneous attacks nationwide against multiple targets, even if it doesn’t control territory like it did before the surge of US and Iraqi forces in 2007.
Al Qaeda has now executed six mass-casualty attacks since the turn of the year, when the US military fully withdrew its forces from the country [see Threat Matrix report, Suicide bomber kills 19 outside Baghdad police academy]. In the last such attack, which took place four days ago, 19 Iraqi policemen and cadets were killed in a suicide bombing outside a training center in Baghdad.
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6 Comments
The bottom line here is that without the US taking these people down, the Iraqi’s just are not able to crush Al Qaida in Iraq. But we did all we could and to their detrement the Iraqis were foolish enough to put idiotic conditions on us staying…now they are paying the price.
How quaint courtesy of President Obama & his ‘Irish Car Bombers,’ Biden, Donilon’s & Brennan, irresponsible disengagement from Iraq we now get the pleasure of watching an Iraq on the cusp of slipping back into the pandemonium everybody labored so hard to extricate Iraq from.
I do not believe that the continued presence of foreign troops in Iraq would prevent such violence. This is the regrettable outcome of a regrettable war.
Violence in Iraq continues to be down more than 95% below its peak.
However, precise aggregate violence indicators for January and February, 2012 are hard to come by.
re:k dragon
we all are welcome to frame the Iraq war however we see fit what is certain is that war with Saddam was inevitable.
US presence might not be able to prevent ‘everything’ but it’s continued presence would have unquestionably contributed to less violence. Further expansion of security infrastructure would happened faster & with less political infighting on the part of Iraqi’s.
re: mike
What about the violence and infighting that occurred as a result of the presence of foreign soldiers?
In no way am I defending the actions of Saddam or the insurgency but I think everyone can agree that any foreign occupation is bound to cause problems.