All the talk about how calm Iraq is now thanks to the surge only indicates how dumbed-down our definition of "calm" has become. A suicide bomber blew himself up near a police station northeast of Baghdad Dec. 4, killing at least eight and wounding 30. The attack occurred as police were gathered at the station in Jalula, Diyala province, with Kurdish peshmerga troops who came to the area as part of a security crackdown. The dead included four Iraqi police, two Kurdish troops and two civilians, police said. (AP [2], Dec. 4) On Dec. 5, car bombs killed at least four across northern Iraq. The most deadly was in Kirkuk, where explosives hidden in a parked car killed three Kurdish troops in a passing convoy. (AP [3], Dec. 5) On Dec. 6, eight peshmerga troops and three gunmen from an unknown militant group were killed in a battle at Khanaqin, Diyala. (Reuters [4], Dec. 6)
See our last post on Iraq and the struggle in Kurdistan [5].
