April 21, 2004

Deadly Blasts at Three Basra Police Stations

A series of explosions ripped through three police stations and a police academy in the southern Iraqi city of Basra Wednesday, killing at least 55 people, including some 10 schoolchildren, and injuring at least 238, officials said.

Three near simultaneous blasts targeted police stations at rush hour in Basra. At about the same time, a fourth explosion ripped through the police academy in the Basra suburb of Zubair. An hour later another blast targeted the same police academy.
[Clearly, the bad guys are trying to get at their "brother" Muslim Iraqi policemen whom they regard as "collaborators" with the "infidel occupiers."
They also know that once we hand over political sovreignity on June 30, the IP will be the "first responders" for the new government of the Free Iraq and this they cannot abide. Bastards.]

Forty-five people were killed in the police station blasts and 10 were killed in the police academy explosions, officials and witnesses said. The injured included two British soldiers at the police academy, Maj. Hisham al-Halawi, spokesman for British forces in Basra, told Al-Arabiya television.
[...]
At one station in the Saudia district of Basra, four vehicles were seen destroyed including two school vans that were passing that station at the time of the attack. One was carrying students from a girls' middle school and the other carried kindergarten students.
[Oh....the little ones.
This is almost too hard to blog, although after 3+ years of the Intifada in Israel, we should all be "used" to the idea of children killed by jihadi bombs.
But I'm not.
May God rest the souls of all the innocent babies whose lives have been cut short by terrorist murder and send a comforter to their families.
"Let the little children come unto me." Christ said and I know He's with them now.--Jen]

British forces who rushed to the scene were being hampered by angry protesters, said a Ministry of Defense spokeswoman in London, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The facade of the Saudia station was also heavily damaged and there was a hole 6-feet deep and 9-feet wide in front of the Saudia station.

More than 40 dead and 200 injured from the blast were brought to Basra's Educational Hospital, the city's largest, said Ali Hussein, an emergency physician at the facility.

Dozens of bodies could be seen in the morgue and in the hallways of Basra's Educational Hospital.

Another five dead and 36 injured were evacuated to a second hospital, Basra General Hospital, hospital officials said.
[...]
British military spokesman Squadron Leader Jonathan Arnold said the blasts were believed to have been caused by car bombs. Al-Muhammedawi said, however that the blast may have been caused by rocket attacks.

Also Wednesday, about 35 Iraqi insurgents attacked U.S. Marines in the besieged city of Fallujah with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, setting off a heavy gunbattle, the military said. No casualties were immediately reported.

Iraqi security forces, some wearing flak jackets and carrying weapons, moved back into Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, on Tuesday, part of an agreement between U.S. officials and local leaders aimed at ending hostilities. The accord calls on insurgents to hand in weapons and allows civilians to return.

U.S. officials have warned that if guerrillas do not surrender their weapons, Marines are prepared to storm the city — likely sparking a new round of bloody fighting.

We shall see about the reality of an actual battle in Falluja; what strikes me about the bombings today in Basra is that the enemy isn't going to ever be equal to a real fight with the U.S. Marines in Falluja, so they hit "softer targets" in Basra to try out the mettle of British forces who are in charge there.
The IslamoNazis are still operating with the "Spanish paradigm" in mind and are probably hoping that with enough pressure, they can get Britain to go "wobbly" on having troops in Iraq.
(It should not escape your attention, even though it's across the Big Pond, that the British police just busted 10 Islamist terrorists in Manchester, England who were trying to set off a bomb at a football match this weekend.
The stadium they were targeting holds 67,000 fans during the hugely popular matches.
Were the jihadis able to blow up the venue with that many victims, it would make the Madrid bombings look like a warm-up act to this.
Thank God these evildoers were caught in time!--J.T.)

Also, get our your Iraq maps: Basra is much more accessible to Iran and the soldiers of Hezbollah than Falluja.

Then, we have the Iraqi tribunal set up for Saddam, at long last:

The attacks came a day after Iraqi leaders named a tribunal of judges and prosecutors to try Saddam Hussein, placing a longtime opponent of the ousted dictator in the forefront of the case against him and his former Baathist inner circle.
[...]
On Tuesday, a senior member of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was appointed to head the all-Iraqi tribunal — a potentially controversial choice.

Chalabi, a longtime exile who returned to Iraq and was named to the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, is mistrusted as an outsider by many Iraqis who want to see Saddam prosecuted by Iraqis who were present under his brutal rule.

I have a feeling that those kind of Iraqis will be on the tribunal, too, or at least will be given the opportunity to testify and present evidence.
At last, we know what's to be done with Saddam and the other details will begin falling into place.
The sooner justice is done WRT him, the better, IMO, because you know that someday the enemy will grab some Western hostages or our soldiers and demand Saddam's freedom in return.
In fact, they did something very similar yesterday which, given that it was on the same day that the Saddam tribunal was announced, was peculiar:

Meanwhile, guerrillas fired a barrage of mortar rounds at Baghdad's largest prison, killing 22 prisoners in an attack a U.S. general said may have been an attempt to spark an inmate uprising against American guards. The slain prisoners were all security detainees, meaning they were suspected of belonging to the anti-U.S. insurgency or to Saddam's former regime.

Who knows what the bad guys were trying to "accomplish" with this attack?
Trying to free their buddies?
Kill them and keep them from telling us what they know?
Looking for Saddam?
Whatever it was, it doesn't sound as if the IslamoFascist "guerillas" gained much ground by doing this.
The strategy is called "being nibbled to death by ducks..." or peck, peck, peck.
An attack here, a firefight there, a car bomb or 3 over there.
We'd all better just grit our teeth and get used to the news of these attacks on our troops and our Iraqi friends until June 30 or hopefully sooner, if the terrorists get the message that they can't and won't win against the Coalition.
In the meantime, pray for our troops and send them your love, prayers, support, mail and packages.
Talk up victory here at home and tell the Dimocrats to shut up when they start their whining and carping!
The only way we can lose this war is if we let the naysayers in the press and in Washington win the day--you know who they are, too: Bob Woodward, Ted Kennedy, Dick Clarke, Jamie Gorelick, John F'n Kerry.
We will prevail, so let's be part of the victory and not bona fide members of the Sore-Loserman party and this time, it won't just be the Florida recount, as in 2000, but the whole GWOIT (Global War on Islamist Terror).
I don't intend to lose this war and I'll bet you don't either.
Let's roll.