WWB: bombs going off in civilian neighborhoods

WHAT WAR BRINGS: bombs going off in civilian neighborhoods

Photo: An Iraqi soldier checks a wounded man at the hospital after a bomb attack in Sadr City, northeastern Baghdad July 15, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer

This post is going to cover bombs going off in regular neighborhoods in Iraq. Now imagine this is YOUR neighborhood.

From Iraq Today blog on May 18, 2009, the bombing incidents (there were other incidents of violence that day that are not listed here):

Baghdad:
#1: Two civilians on Monday were wounded when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off in central Baghdad, according to an official security source.

#2: Meanwhile, three civilians were killed and 10 others were wounded when an IED exploded last night near a café in Abu Tasheer area, southern Baghdad.

#3: Around 9:10 p.m. a roadside bomb detonated near a coffee shop in Karrada neighborhood in downtown Baghdad on Sunday. Five people were wounded.

#4: Around 9:30 p.m. two roadside bombs detonated in sequence in Ghadeer of the New Baghdad neighborhood in eastern Baghdad on Sunday. No casualties reported.

#5: A roadside bomb wounded two people in central Baghdad, police said.

Basra:
#1: A police officer on Monday was killed in an improvised explosive device (IED) blast near his house in central Basra city, according to a local security source. “A lieutenant colonel was killed when an explosive device detonated near his house on 14 Tammuz St., downtown Basra,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The explosion wounded the officer’s son and one of his companions,” the source added.

#2: Sunday A roadside bomb wounded an Iraqi soldier near an Iraqi base in northern Basra, 420 km (260 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.

Mosul:
#1: An Iraqi policeman was killed and three civilians were wounded when a suicide bomber targeted the home of the governor of a northern Iraqi province, according to news reports Monday. Citing local police, it said a man detonated explosives packed into his car 150 metres away from the home of Athil al-Najifi, governor of Iraq's northern Nineveh province, in downtown Mosul.

#4: Also Sunday evening, a car bomb targeting an Iraqi military patrol east of Mosul injured two Iraqi soldiers and four civilians bystanders.

#5: That attack followed an attack on an Iraqi police patrol in the western Mosul district of Den-Den, police said. Four people, including one policeman, were killed in that car-bomb attack.

And the Washington Post had this report on May 21, 2009:

At least 23 Iraqis and 3 US soldiers were killed Thursday in attacks in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, shattering a brief calm here and illustrating still precarious security as U.S. forces begin withdrawing from Iraqi cities.

[in one attack] …..a suicide bomber set off an explosion about 11 a.m. near an office for a detachment of an American-backed paramilitary group, tearing through a market teeming with shoppers, Iraqi officials and residents said. Twelve Iraqis and the three Americans were killed.

……"Blood was all over the ground," said Raed Nizar, a street vendor. "The wounded were pleading with motorists who happened to drive by to take them to the hospital." At least 25 people, including nine U.S. soldiers, were wounded.

So what is an “American-backed paramilitary group”? And how many of those 25 wounded Iraqis died later on? How many now have life-long injuries? We might never know. No one should have to beg someone to take them to a hospital.

More from that Washington Post article:

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber killed at least eight members of the American-backed militia in Kirkuk as they waited outside an army station to get paid. It was the second time in the past few weeks that the group's members have been attacked as they were collecting their salaries. A bomb also exploded next to a police station in western Baghdad, killing three policemen and wounding 19 others, police said. The attacks came as the death toll from a car bombing Wednesday in a Shiite neighborhood of northern Baghdad rose to 40.

That last one is not included in this blog post.

And here is example of bombs directed at US troops, but hurting mainly civilians, on May 24, 2009:

Iraq Suicide Bomber Wounds 34 In Mosul Shopping Street

A suicide car bombing which targeted a U.S. military patrol in a busy shopping street of Iraq's troubled northern city of Mosul Sunday wounded 34 people, some of them critically, officials said. "A suicide bombing aimed at a U.S. army patrol in Al-Dawasa district resulted in 34 wounded," a local police official told AFP. There were no immediate reports of Iraqi or U.S. military casualties in the powerful blast which struck a busy downtown city street full of shops.

Some of the injured were in critical condition, and of course, we don’t know if they survived or not. But the people living in Mosul know, as they know full well WHAT WAR BRINGS.

The next date is May 25, 2009. McClatchy reports these bomb incidents:

Around 10 a.m. an IED targeting the U.S. military detonated in the Adil neighborhood of west Baghdad. The US military confirmed the incident saying there were no casualties associated with the event.

Around 4 p.m. a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol in New Baghdad neighborhood in eastern Baghdad on Monday. No casualties reported.

Notice something about the above two incidents? The violence was directed towards the occupying troops, not the general population. In these two cases, there were no casualties reported, but that is often not the case. Oftentimes, civilians are hurt or killed.

McClatchy goes on:

Diyala: Four policemen were injured by a roadside bomb north of Baquba city around 9 a.m.

Nineveh: A bomb targeted an American patrol in tal Al-Ruman in western Mosul in the afternoon. One Iraqi civilian was wounded with no casualties on the American side.

Again, the last one was targeted at the occupation troops. This time a civilian was wounded.

More:

Anbar: A two month old infant was killed, and his while his parents and older brother were wounded, in the Julan neighborhood of Falluja on Saturday night. A grenade was thrown on the roof of that family’s house. The family was sleeping on the roof at the time.

Anbar: Around 4 p.m. a roadside bomb targeted a convoy for one of the foreign security companies near the police commando’s headquarters on the high of southern Falluja on Monday. One vehicle was totally damaged, but no further information released of the number of casualties as the area was blocked by police and the American forces in the area.

And yet again, the target of the last one was foreigners, not locals. Obviously not true of the first incident.

And there was another car bombing in a crowded market in Al Bathaa, a town in the southern part of Iraq. That one killed at least 33 people and over 70 wounded. This happened on June 10, 2009. Here is one local person’s response to this bombing:

High school teacher Hussein Salim said the market was supposed to be guarded by the police. He said he rushed to the scene and helped gather body parts, some of which had been blown onto the roof of nearby homes.

"How could the car enter the market? It was crowded with people ... The police neglected their job," he said. "I saw five children and six women among the dead."

And that was followed by a massive truck bombing in Kirkuk on June 20, 2009. That killed at least 64 people and injured over 160 people. A dozen homes were flattened. A few details:

It happened as worshippers were leaving the packed Al-Rasoul mosque, run by the minority Turkmen community in the town of Taza, just to the south of Kirkuk, after midday prayers.

Here is a more recent, and very deadly example of bombs going off in civilian neighborhood in Iraq on July 9, 2009.

A pair of suicide bombers struck near a judge’s house in Tal Afar this morning. At least 38 were killed and as many as 84 were wounded in the attack. The attack follows a pair of significant bombings only 40 miles away near the provincial capital of Mosul yesterday. The first bomber was dressed in a policeman’s uniform. When the judge, who is also an anti-terrorism investigator, opened the door, the bomber detonated his explosives. A second bomber struck amidst a crowd that had gathered at the site of the first blast.

Later reports said at least 60 were killed and 160 injured.

But that was not the only bomb going off in a civilian neighborhood that day.

In Baghdad, a pair of blasts in the evening left nine dead and 35 wounded, but the toll is expected to rise. The first bomb was left in a cart in the Adhamiya/Kisra area; a roadside bomb exploded immediately afterwards. Separately, a bomb killed one person and wounded five in the Karrada neighborhood; the victims were part of a bank convoy. Two separate blasts in Saidiya/Mawasalat left six wounded. Later, a bomb in Amil left one dead and five wounded.

A pair of bomb blasts at a market killed eight Iraqis and wounded as many as 30 more in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. At least one more bomb was discovered and defused.

In total, at least 77 Iraqis died on July 9, 2009. That would be equivalent to having at least 847 Americans die in one day from terrorist bombings.

Think about that.

So, there you have it- partial reports of bombs going off in ordinary neighborhoods, in a period when the violence is actually less than it had been (by a long shot) and over six years after the US invaded Iraq.

That is what we brought to Iraq: bombs going off on a regular basis. That is WHAT WAR BRINGS.

Oh, and it happens in Afghanistan too – bombs directed at US forces mainly killing civilians. Here is one example from June 2, 2009:

A suicide bomber destroyed a civilian vehicle about five kilometres (three miles) from the country's largest US military base at the small town of Bagram, 50 kilometres north of Kabul, the interior ministry said.

Six people from the same family were killed, including two children, it said in a statement. Another child was wounded, it said.

"Two men, two women and two children are killed," ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP separately.

Here’s one from today in Iraq – suicide bomber in Ramadi kills at least six.

It is a near daily occurrence in Iraq and at least a bi-weekly occurrence in Afghanistan.

It would take years and years to make a comprehensive list of all the sticky bombs, car bombs, motorcycle bombs, truck bombs, suicide bombs, IEDs, and other bombs that have gone off in Iraq and Afghanistan since the US invaded. The above listing is very partial. It only covers a few of the bombings from May, June and July 2009. And these incidents of bombing are reduced from what we were seeing in 2005-2007.

There is a blog that lists these on a daily basis – Iraq Today. This blog follows a prior blog that listed what was happening in Iraq on a daily basis – Today In Iraq.

And here is a blog that has pictures of the aftermath of the bombing. Graphic photos indeed..... And reality for the majority of Iraqi people.

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: bombs going off in civilian neighborhoods.