Iraq: Suicide Bomber Kills 25 West Of Baghdad Last Edited: Sunday, 24 Aug 2008, 4:39 PM CDT Created: Sunday, 24 Aug 2008, 3:48 PM CDT
U.S. Army soldiers, center, and Iraqi police, right, provide security during the re-opening of a neighbourhood that had been abandoned by citizens because of sectarian violence, in the Dora area of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Loay Hameed)
or just enabling jstl so that we can just write ${bean.property} and jsp takes care of the new lines. -->By The Associated Press
BAGHDAD -- A suicide bomber blew himself up Sunday in the midst of a celebration to welcome home an Iraqi detainee released from U.S. custody, killing at least 25 people, Iraqi officials said.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced the arrest of an al-Qaida in Iraq figure who allegedly planned the 2006 kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll -- one of the highest-profile attacks against Westerners in Iraq.
The suicide attack occurred inside one of several tents set up outside a house in the Abu Ghraib area on Baghdad's western outskirts, according to residents and police. It was unclear if the former detainee was among the casualties.
A woman who was wounded but declined to give her name for security reasons said she was preparing food behind the tents when the blast occurred at about 9 p.m., knocking her and her three young children off their feet.
Residents and police said Ayyid Salim al-Zubaie, a local sheik in the mainly Sunni area, had invited dozens of guests to a banquet in honor of his son, who was released earlier in the day from Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
Residents said the detainee-son had quarreled with al-Qaida members while in detention and may have been the target of the attack.
Yassir al-Jumaili, a doctor at the hospital in nearby Fallujah where most of the wounded were taken, gave the death toll as 25 and said at least 29 other people were wounded.
The blast was a grim reminder of the dangers still facing Iraqis despite a sharp decrease in violence after the 2007 U.S. troop buildup, a Sunni decision to join forces with the Americans against al-Qaida and a Shiite militia cease-fire.
The announcement of the arrest of Salim Abdullah Ashur al-Shujayri, also known as Abu Othman, was a major breakthrough in a series of kidnappings.
He was captured Aug. 11 in Baghdad and accused of being "the planner behind the kidnapping" of Carroll, a Christian Science Monitor reporter who was seized Jan. 7, 2006 and released three months later, according to the military.
The statement also said al-Shujayri's associates were involved in the kidnappings of Christian peace activists and British aid worker Margaret Hassan, but did not elaborate.
Kidnappings of Westerners forced foreigners to flee Iraq or take refuge in heavily guarded compounds, diminishing the ability of aid groups and journalists to operate. Many of the victims were butchered and their deaths recorded on videotapes distributed to Arab satellite TV stations or posted on the Web.
Hassan, 59, the director of CARE international in Iraq, was abducted in Baghdad in October 2004 and shown on a video pleading for her life, calling on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to withdraw troops from Iraq.
She was killed a month later, but her body was never found. The case drew special attention because Hassan, who was married to an Iraqi, had lived in the country for 30 years and spent nearly half her life helping Iraqis.
Four men from the Chicago-based group, Christian Peacemaker Teams, disappeared Nov. 26, 2005, in Baghdad and videotapes later showed them in captivity. One of the hostages, American Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va., was found shot dead. The other three -- two Canadians and a Briton -- were later rescued.
Carroll was seized in west Baghdad and her interpreter was killed. The kidnappers, a formerly unknown group calling itself the Revenge Brigade, demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq. U.S. officials freed some female detainees but said the decision was unrelated to the demands.
The statement said U.S. troops also captured another al-Qaida figure -- Ali Rash Nasir Jiyad al-Shammari -- on Aug. 17 in Baghdad. He was accused of being a senior adviser for the terror network and funneling money, weapons and explosives to insurgents in the capital "during its most active operational period in early 2007," the military said.
Al-Shammari, also known as Abu Tiba, personally approved targets for car and suicide bombings targeting Iraqi civilians, the military said.
The military statement said al-Qaida in Iraq conducted almost 300 bombings, killing more than 1,500 civilians and wounding more than twice that many in 2007, compared with 28 attacks that killed 125 Iraqi civilians in the first half of this year.
"The capture of Abu Tiba and Abu Othman eliminates two of the few remaining experienced leaders in the AQI network," said military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll.
Also Sunday, the U.S. military said a woman wearing a bomb-laden vest surrendered to Iraqi police in Baqouba rather than blow herself up.
She led police to a second suicide vest, and a 13-year-old girl was arrested, the military said.
Women have increasingly been recruited by insurgents to carry out attacks because it's easier for them to evade security checks.
----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: robert Date: Aug 21, 2008 8:16 AM
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From: Lori
Date: Aug 21, 2008 6:09 AM
thanks: Truth Hurts ~ A Pain Necessary To Cure
Date: Aug 21, 2008 5:57 AM
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From: FLOWER
Date: Aug 21, 2008 3:13 AM
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From: THINK PEACE WORLD
Date: Aug 21, 2008 2:46 AM
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From: Sacred Grounds Coffeehouse
Date: Aug 21, 2008 4:32 AM
Ok folks... ever heard of Codex Alumentarius?
The UN Agenda 21? GOOGLE IT. Look up Natural Solutions in conjunction with Codex Alumentarius.
Well C-51 is the first in line through Canada of starting this process to cut us off from nature's own medicine in harmony with our bodies.
SPEAK UP NOW WHILE YOU STILL HAVE A VOICE! IT IS HARD TO SPEAK WITH YOU DON'T HAVE A VOICE.
Heal Yourself? Not Permitted
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From: The Truth - SPREAD It!
Date: Aug 21, 2008 12:33 AM
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From: sage advice
Date: Aug 20, 2008 10:19 PM
Much Respect to Brasscheck TV
It's starting in Canada
After 10,000 plus years of safe, effective, affordable botanical medicine, the federal governments of various countries have decided that enough is enough.
With the "encouragement" of the white collar criminals in the pharmaceutical industry, the white collar criminals in government are drafting new laws to "protect" the Canadian public from herbs and food supplements.
Herbs will be put in the same class and regulated the same way as pharmaceutical products. Estimates are this will result in 70% of currently available natural health products removed from the market.
And your backyard garden?
You may not be permitted to grow herbs for medicinal use any more. Too dangerous without government regulation to protect you, don't you know.
Impossible you say?
DuPont and others succeeded in turning a plant that provided an essential industrial raw material - hemp - into an outlaw in order to eliminate it as competition for its own products. The drug companies can do it to mint and camomile too.
