Tuesday, July 21, 2009

As the "resistance" continues...

"Children, shoppers and men looking for a day's work were among the dead in attacks in Baghdad, Ramadi and Baqouba, cities that saw some of the most intense fighting of Iraq's long war but have since experienced sharp drops in violence.

...Tuesday's violence began just after 5 a.m., when two bombs exploded a few seconds apart near a group of day laborers in the Shiite district of Sadr City in northeast Baghdad, which was often targeted at the height of sectarian bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites in 2006 and 2007.

Police said one bomb was hidden in a food stall and the other was concealed in a trash pile, and that four people died and 31 were injured.

Ahmed Ali was working in a nearby bakery when the explosions occurred.

"After a few seconds, dust and smoke reached the bakery. We stayed inside because we feared other explosions might occur," Ali said. "After about five minutes, we went out to see what happened. We saw the bodies covered with blood and some food containers and construction tools scattered here and there."

At around 11:30 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded near a market in Sadr City, killing four people and wounding at least 21, police and hospital officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The dead included a baby girl and a 10-year-old girl.

In the Dora district of south Baghdad, two people died and six were wounded when a car bomb exploded near a wholesale produce market. And in Ramadi, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber targeted a restaurant and killed a doctor and injured 19 other people, including several children, said police Maj. Gen. Tareq Youssef.

Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, a former Sunni insurgent stronghold. Police in the province on Tuesday declared a two-day ban on the use of vehicles and motorcycles as they searched for suspects in a recent spate of bombings in Ramadi and nearby Fallujah.

Also, a woman and her child were killed by a bomb hidden in trash in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, said police Col. Ghalib al-Kharki.

At around 7:45 p.m., bombs killed five civilians and wounded 29 in an open-air market in Husseiniya, just northeast of Baghdad, police and medical officials said. Two bombs were hidden in trash about 50 meters apart and exploded within a few seconds of each other."

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