Two suicide bombers killed 76 people in a crowded market in Baghdad's Shi'ite Shaab district March 29, as three suicide car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in Khalis, a Shi'ite town north of the capital, killing 53 and wounding 103. (Reuters [1], March 30) A bomb planted under a parked car also tore through a market in Baghdad's mixed Al-Bayaa district, killing three and wounding 26. And a car bomb exploded near a Shi'ite mosque in Mahmoudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing six persons and wounding 19. (AP [2], March 29)
In Fallujah, two suicide car bombs, including a truck carrying Chlorine toxic gas, struck the main US base in Fallujah, killing eight Iraqi policemen and wounding more than 20 others, local police said. (Xinhua [3], March 29)
The bombings took place as Ryan C. Crocker was sworn in as US ambassador to Iraq in the Green Zone, taking over from Zalmay Khalilzad [4]. (AP [2], March 29)
The Reuters report on the Baghdad and Khalis attacks reads:
The upsurge in sectarian violence threatens all-out civil war and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, called for restraint and urged Iraqis to work with security forces to prevent the violence spiralling out of control.
When do we decide that this is a civil war already? Of course we have been asking that [5] for a very long time...
See our last posts on Iraq [6] and the sectarian cleansing [7].
