An Iraqi boy drinks from a tap at a camp for displaced people in Najaf. Photograph: Qassem Neim/AFP/Getty Images
Iraq: At least eight dead including another journalist (click here)
Posted: 28-07-2007 , 08:58 GMT
Seven people, including two policemen died and at least 11 others were hurt in two bomb attacks in the city of Fallujah, a local police source said on Saturday.
Elsewhere, an Iraqi journalist working for a Kuwaiti-owned satellite channel has died after being shot in the head by a sniper on his way home from work, an Iraq-based watchdog said on Saturday. “The Iraqi reporter Adnan al-Safi, 40, who works for Al-Anwar space channel, died on Friday morning after he had been shot by a sniper in the head on Wednesday,” a statement from the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory said, according to AFP.
Safi, who also worked as an adviser to the Iraqi journalists’ union and as a reporter for Sawt al-Iraq (Voice of Iraq), is survived by his wife and three children.
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said Saturday that the death toll in an attack on a Shiite market district in Baghdad had risen to 61 after dozens more bodies were pulled from the rubble. Blasts struck the Karradah district in central Baghdad as it was packed with shoppers at about 6:40 p.m. on Thursday, setting buildings and cars on fire and sending three huge columns of smoke billowing into the sky.
© 2007 Al Bawaba (http://www.albawaba.com/)
YET, what are the propagandists reporting? They are reporting the war is over because Iraq won a soccer tournament. Then I guess more than ever it's time to bring the troops home and we'll see Iraq at the Olympics.
Calls for Unity After Iraq Upsets Saudi Arabia at Asian Cup (click here)
Monday, July 30, 2007
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Hundreds of pages have been ripped from the calendar since Iraqis last showed the unity and happiness that flowed across the land on Sunday.
And it would have been foolhardy to predict a soccer team — the determined Lions of the Two Rivers — would unleash a flood of joy held back for decades by the dam of Saddam Hussein's tyranny and four-plus years of war since America toppled him.
But after the team's victory in the prestigious 2007 Asian Cup, the Iraqi people seemed far ahead of their leaders in letting sectarian bygones be bygones and allowing ethnic atrocities to fade.
Despite a security crackdown, curfews banning vehicles, and decrees forbidding the penchant in this part of the world to grab an AK-47 and rip off celebratory rounds, people rejoiced in the streets — and gunfire roared.
It roared across Baghdad at the second-half goal against Saudi Arabia. It was deafening when the underdog Lions sealed the 1-0 victory in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Bring the troops home now ! American occupation of Iraq is a crime against humanity. 8 million Iraqis is over a third of the current citizens.
8 million Iraqis need urgent aid, report says (click here)
One third of the Iraqi population needs emergency aid because of the humanitarian crisis caused by war and ongoing violence, according to a new report.
Around 8 million Iraqis are in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter, a joint report (pdf)released today by Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq said.
The document said that although armed violence is the greatest threat facing Iraqis, the population is also experiencing another crisis of "an alarming scale and severity"....
The Iraqis cannot do worse than this. It's just not possible.
