U.S. airstrike story is challenged: locals say that woman and child were among those killed

Iraqi men load onto a car the coffin of a relative killed during a US military air strike near Kadhimiya shrine

 WISSAM AL-OKAILI/AFP/Getty

Detentions Take Strange Pattern, Residents Say; Airstrike Death Toll May Top 50 

Iraqis chant slogans as they carry coffins of their relatives killed during a US military air strike in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, 08 August 2007.  Also, according to local sources, US forces operating in two separate areas of Sadr City took one man from each household having over four sons.  Locals speculate as to the purpose of the operations, since the men taken from each household were not known to be wanted by US or Iraqi forces.  37 were arrested in the raids, according to local sources.

A US military spokesman said there were no civilian casualties in the strikes by helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft in Sadr City, a sprawling Shi’ite slum in northeastern Baghdad.  “There were women and children in the area when we conducted the operation, but none were killed in the air strike,” Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said.

The manager of the Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City said 10 people were killed, one of them a woman, and seven men wounded. Sadr City Hospital had received three bodies, its manager said, and four wounded, including a 13-year-old boy.  Police said 11 people died, including women and children.

The predawn raid came hours before a vehicle curfew was imposed in the city, ahead of a major Shi’ite ceremony that two years ago saw the deadliest single incident in Iraq’s four-year conflict. More than 1,000 people were killed in a stampede.

The US military said its soldiers and Iraqi allies killed two armed men as they began raids in Sadr City, a stronghold of militia fighters loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Air strikes were called in when they saw “a large group of armed men” and a vehicle attempting to attack ground forces, a US military statement said.

“Eliminating these cells is important to bring down the level of violence against US and Iraqi troops and the Iraqi people and taking weapons off the street,” Garver said.

http://www.thanhniennews.com/worlds/?catid=9&newsid=30819

Shi’a pilgrims flock to Baghdad to revere Imam.

Photo by Sabah Arar/AFP.

Shi’a (Shiite) faithful enter the Kadhimiya shrine on Monday.

Shiite pilgrims flock to war-torn Baghdad (source)
By Khalil Jalil – BAGHDAD Thousands of Shiite pilgrims converged on war-torn Baghdad on Wednesday, marching through the streets under stringent security and punishing heat to commemorate the death of a revered imam. Iraq banned all vehicle traffic in the capital from daybreak to guard against the vicious car bombings that routinely target Shiite crowds and have spread carnage at previous religious events, as security forces manned checkpoints.Two years ago, Shiites marching in memory of Imam Musa Kadhim were gripped by panic after mortar shells were fired at the mosque housing his tomb, amid rumours of suicide bombers in a crowd crossing a bridge over the river Tigris. At least 965 people — many of them women and children — were trampled to death in a stampede or drowned after jumping into the river, in the bloodiest tragedy of Iraq’s sectarian conflict, one still raw in the minds of many.Set to last three days, the curfew cloaked the sweltering streets of Baghdad in eery calm while men, women dressed from head to toe in black, and children walked past army tanks and police jeeps to Kadhim’s tomb.“Despite the security situation and the probable danger, this is a special occasion for us that we can’t miss and one of the most important Shiite events,” said Haidar Abdul Hussein, 33, from the neighbourhood of Karrada.

Some 85,000 Iraqi and US troops have deployed in Baghdad since February to flush out Sunni extremists and Shiite militias, but the number of civilians killed has remained high and rose last month to pre-surge levels.

Any major attack at this year’s commemoration would be a further blow for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s shrinking government, now boycotted by 17 ministers from a spectrum of Shiite, Sunni and non-sectarian parties.

“The leadership of the Baghdad security plan decided to impose the vehicle curfew from Wednesday morning, instead of the evening (as previously announced) until Saturday morning,” Brigadier General Qassim Atta told state television.

Civilians would not be allowed to carry weapons and Iraqi security forces would tightly control the route that pilgrims, possibly tens of thousands, will follow on foot to the tomb in the Kadhimiyah district, he said.

“This pilgrimage to Imam Kadhim is one of our most important occasions… which we do despite the risks,” said Karim Hussein, 35.

“We’re going to Kadhimiyah one day before the anniversary of the death and we will stay there until the climax tomorrow,” he said.

Musa Kadhim was the seventh of the 12 Shiite imams and died in Baghdad in 799 after he was poisoned in prison. Every year tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims mark his passing by visiting his tomb in Kadhimiyah.

Police in the central Shiite shrine city of Karbala also installed a vehicle curfew, set up flying checkpoints and deployed an extra unit to protect the pilgrims on the march to Baghdad, spokesman Rahman Mushawi said.

Since US troops invaded in 2003, Iraq has plummeted into sectarian conflict between extremist factions of the newly empowered Shiite majority and of the bitter Sunni former elite, killing tens of thousands of civilians.

Pressing the latest security plan to quell the violence, American troop levels currently stand at the record high of nearly 162,000 in Iraq, which the Pentagon put down to overlapping rotations.

Washington and its closest ally London are now pushing the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) to expand its role, by extending and widening its mandate, in a vote that could pass as early as Thursday.

The draft aims to prolong UNAMI’s mandate, which expires on Friday, and for the UN special envoy in Iraq to “advise, support and assist” the government in Baghdad on a range of political, economic, legal and human rights affairs.

The United Nations pulled most of its personnel out of Baghdad after 22 workers, including special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, was killed in a truck bombing outside its Baghdad headquarters on August 19, 2003.

But the violence continued on Wednesday. A roadside bomb ripped through an Iraqi police convoy in the ethnically fraught northern oil capital of Kirkuk, killing one policeman and wounding five, Colonel Samir Abdallah said.