"Four landmark Baghdad hotels were heavily damaged by car bombs this afternoon in the fourth co-ordinated attack on prominent targets as Iraq readies for an increasingly fraught election.
Security officials said at least 36 people were killed and more than 80 injured by attackers, including suicide bombers and gunmen.
The blasts took place around the same time as the execution of one of Saddam Hussein's most infamous henchman, Ali Hassan al-Majid, otherwise known as Chemical Ali. The timing raised fresh fears that former Ba'athists had launched the campaign in a bid to destabilise the government ahead of the poll.
The first bomb was detonated in between the Sheraton and Palestine hotels in the centre of the capital, causing massive damage to both well-known structures. Around three minutes later, the Babylon hotel on the banks of the Tigris river, just south of the US Embassy, was hit by a suicide bomber driving a car past the perimeter barriers. Damage was also reported to be severe."
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"Baghdad Suicide Blast Kills at Least 21" at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/26/world/main6142028.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.5
About midway through the above story and writing about reactions to the execution of Chemical Ali:
"In the Kurdish town of Halabja in nothern Iraq, the scene of the 1988 poison gas attack that killed 5,000 people and cemented Chemical Ali's infamy, more than 400 Kurdish government officials and families who lost loved ones in the gassing defied the January chill to gather in a cemetery and at a monument to the victims.
'I am wondering which of my family's graves I would visit first to tell them about the death of Chemical Ali so they can sleep in peace' said Parvin Kamal Jalal, a 53-year-old woman who said she lost her parents and 12 other family members in the attack."
Another brave honorable Iraqi gives his life for his homeland. Our best wishes are with the family of this martyr and all the Iraqi people as they mourn their fallen freedom fighters.
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