Iraq: At least 30 die as Zarqawi declares ”all-out war”

Iraq's capital Baghdad has been hit by a series of blasts for a second day running, killing at least 29 people.

In the first attack, at least 16 police commandos were killed when their patrol was struck in southern Doura district.

Hours later, 10 more policemen died in the same area following two more bomb attacks and ensuing gun battles between police and insurgents.

The blast follows Wednesday's violence, Iraq's deadliest since the 2003 US-led invasion. More than 182 people died.

The BBC's Caroline Hawley in Baghdad says the militants are making good on their threats of more bloodshed following the attacks on Wednesday.

Addressing the UN summit in New York, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said terrorism was targeting every Iraqi individual and every ambition of Iraq's development.

Mr Talabani also urged the international community to do more to help rebuild Iraq.

In other incidents:

* The bodies of at least six men shot dead are found by police in various parts of Baghdad

* A Shia cleric is killed and three other people are wounded in a bomb attack near a mosque in the northern city of Mosul

* A policeman is killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad

* Three Shia pilgrims are killed in a drive-by shooting on their way to the holy city of Karbala

* Two police officers are killed and two wounded in the northern city of Kirkuk

* Three civilians are killed in an attack on a ministry of industry bus in east Baghdad.

Al-Qaeda threat

A group claiming to be al-Qaeda in Iraq released a statement on a website saying it was acting after US and Iraqi forces attacked insurgents in the northern town of Talafar.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4247646.stm

A fresh wave of attacks in Iraq today left at least 31 people dead, a day after suicide bombings in Baghdad killed more than 150.

Three suicide bombings in the Dora district of Baghdad this morning killed at least 23 police officers and five civilians.

In other attacks today, three civilians were killed and 13 injured when a roadside bomb struck a Ministry of Industry bus in eastern Baghdad.

At least five more police officers were killed in separate attacks in Baghdad and beyond, including two officers who died in a roadside bombing in the northern city of Kirkuk.

The Dora bombings - almost certain to have been the work of Sunni insurgents - targeted officers from the police's rapid reaction force.

In the first suicide bomb attack, a bomber detonated his explosives at around 8am local time (0500 BST) after ramming his car into a convoy of police vehicles.

Police said the victims included at least 16 police officers and five civilians, while 13 policemen and eight civilians were injured.

Four hours later, in the same area, two more suicide bombers struck police targets around half a mile apart within a minute of each other. Officials said at least seven police officers died and nine were wounded along with one civilian.

There were also reports of a gun battle between police and militants after the explosions.

Following the attacks, the US military and Iraqi police drove through Dora warning residents to stay indoors because five more car bombers were said to be ready to attack. Witnesses said streets in the area were abandoned.

Police found the bodies of seven unidentified men in various areas of the Iraqi capital. All had their hands tied and had been blindfolded.

Outside Baghdad, US forces and insurgents reportedly clashed in the troubled western town of Ramadi, a militant stronghold on the main road to neighbouring Jordan. There were reports of militants firing mortars at US and Iraqi forces.

Today's violence came after shootings and more than a dozen bombings killed scores of people in Baghdad and wounded more than 500 yesterday.

It was one of the worst days of violence since the end of major combat following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

After the attacks, a website message purported to have been from the Sunni Islamist militant group al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility. There was no immediate claim for today's bombings.

In the message, the group said it was waging a national suicide bombing campaign to avenge a continuing US and Iraqi counter-insurgency operation in Tal Afar, near the Syrian border in the north of the country.

The Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claiming to be the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, yesterday declared "war against Shias of all Iraq, wherever they are in Iraq". His statement was made on an audiotape broadcast by the Dubai-based television station al-Arabiya.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1570495,00.html

Al-Hayat: Some 30 policemen were killed in 3 suicide bombings Thursday, and 60 were wounded. Also killed was a Shiite religious leader. The body was discovered of a leader of the Dawa Party (the same fundamentalist Shiite party to which Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari belongs). The body of Shaikh Mahdi al-Attar was one of 8 that were discovered in Mosul. He had been kidnapped in Latifiyah about 3 weeks ago.

Al-Hayat says that its sources in the Iraqi resistance deny the rumor that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has made a breakthrough in uniting the various guerrilla groups in Iraq under his leadership. They said that the guerrilla groups are too ideologically different from one another and too factious to permit Zarqawi to subsume them under his leadership. Many of the Iraqi guerrilla factions are led by officers in the former Baath military. Despite the danger to them signalled by the Tal Afar operation and the threats made recently by the minister of defense that Ramadi is next, these faction leaders rejected Zarqawi's plea that they unite to establish an Islamic Emirate in Iraq on the model of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In statements on the internet, the guerrilla groups also reject Zarqawi's tactic of targetting innocent civilians and especially Iraqi Shiites. The source says that the 12 bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday did involve coordination, but that the others rejected Zarqawi's plan to attack the Shiites.

The Shiite religious parties affirmed their determination to deploy their paramilitaries in Shiite neighborhoods, in coordination with Iraqi security forces, to protect them from Zarqawi, who announced a "total war on the Shiites wherever they are found." Sadrist leader `Aamir al-Hasani told al-Hayat that the Mahdi Army will begin spreading out in the Shiite neighborhoods.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/32-dead-in-guerrilla-violence-al-hayat.html

It's a way to dodge the question, a typical Zionist ploy.

Gehrig is correct, and the editors here really are distorting what you can read here to satisfy a personal grudge, that's even *worse* politics. It's even likely. They have demonstrated repeatedly that they would rather you be ignorant than learn the truth from SF-IMC. That's not just really, really bad politics, it's puerile. That's how it's done in Middle School.

Another possibility is that they have simply been paid off by the Zionists, for it is the Zionists, not Americans or Iraqis, who benefit from Iraqi civil war. One indicator this site may be working for the Zionists is the flood of Zionist propaganda that dominates this site. On most IMCs it's a trickle at most, and often completely absent. Here, it's the main thing that happens. There are a limited number of explanations for this, none of them savory.

Al-Qaida's leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead but Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged military occupation, an Iraqi Shia cleric says in an interview.

Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi, the imam of the al-Kadhimiyah mosque in Baghdad, told France's Le Monde newspaper on Friday: "I don't think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi exists as such. He's simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people."

Al-Kalesi claimed that al-Zarqawi was killed in the Kurdish northern region of Iraq at the beginning of the US-led war on the country as he was meeting with members of the Ansar Al-Islam group affiliated to al-Qaida.

"His family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is therefore a ploy used by the Americans, an excuse to continue the occupation. It's a pretext so they don't leave Iraq."

Al-Kalesi made the comments to Le Monde as he passed through Paris after attending an inter-religious gathering in the eastern French city of Lyon organised by the Roman Catholic Sant'Egidio Community.


Fake statement

The cleric dismissed statements attributed to Zarqawi.

"He said an audio message posted on the Internet on Wednesday and attributed to al-Zarqawi, was meant to push Shia "to find refuge with the Americans rather than join the resistance."

The voice message had declared "all-out war" on Iraqi Shia and claimed responsibility for a series of attacks that killed more than 150 people, most of them Shia waiting to be hired as day labourers in Baghdad.

"If the occupation continues, the situation will only get worse and Iraqis will increasingly join the resistance," al-Kalesi said.

Iraq's main Sunni Arab religious authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, has condemned the call to arms against Shia, calling it "very dangerous" and saying it "plays into the hands of the occupier who wants to split up the country and spark a sectarian war."

Saturday 17 September 2005, 8:12 Makka Time, 5:12 GMT