Word: baghdad
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...joint tour by Sunni and Shi'ite tribal sheiks was supposed to be part of an effort toward national reconciliation: a walk through the Abu Ghraib marketplace in western Baghdad after the conclusion of a nearby peace meeting. But it turned into a bloodbath. At least 32 people were killed - including security officials as well as two Iraqi television journalists - and dozens were wounded after a suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt in the crowd. (See pictures of the aftershocks of the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal...
Tuesday's strike was the second major attack in a week, raising fears of a return to Iraq's bad old days when such deadly blasts were daily occurrences. On Sunday, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt and riding an explosives-laden motorcycle targeted recruits outside Baghdad's Police Academy, leaving some 28 dead. The spike in violence comes as the U.S. prepares to reduce its troop numbers here from 140,000 to 128,000 by September. It also follows Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attempt to cobble together a semblance of pan-Iraqi political solidarity...
Tahseen al-Sheikaly, a government spokesman for the Baghdad Security Plan, said the renewed violence was in response to al-Maliki's reconciliation efforts as well as U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw all combat troops by next year. "It appears all these things are not welcomed by Iraq's enemies, and so they are disturbing the security situation," al-Sheikaly said. "But when such pockets of terrorism do something, we follow them and we capture them. In the next few days, you'll hear that we've captured the people who have done these things...
...been an uptick in violence in recent weeks. Some 258 Iraqis were killed in February, a 35% increase over January's total of 191, which was the lowest figure since 2003, according to government statistics. On Thursday a car bombing at a livestock market in Hilla, south of Baghdad, left 12 people dead. Meanwhile, American and Iraqi security forces continue to try to rout out the remnants of Al-Qaeda in the restive northern city of Mosul and in the northeastern Diyala province...
...third anniversary of America's invasion of Baghdad, TIME set out to record the "Voices of Iraq...