Berwaspada pada para perusak perdamaian yg mengadudombakan para
pejuang dan Pemerintahan Irak. Mengapa tidak dilalui pembicaraan
penyelesaian konflik??


Wassalam,
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Suicide Car Blast Kills 68 People in Iraq

BAQOUBA, Iraq - A suicide car bomb exploded on a busy downtown
boulevard in Baqouba on Wednesday, reducing a bus full of passengers
to a charred wreck, ripping through nearby shops and killing at least
68 Iraqis in one of the deadliest single insurgent attacks since the
U.S. invasion.

Dozens of burned bodies were strewn in the street and piled on
curbsides, and vehicles, fruit stalls and shops were a bloody tangle
of twisted metal from the blast, which targeted Iraqis lined up
outside a police recruiting station. Most, if not all, of the dead
were civilians.

"These were all innocent Iraqis, there were no Americans," an angry
man shouted as Iraqis tried to cover the dead with pieces of
cardboard.

The attack, the deadliest since Americans handed power to an Iraqi
government June 28, came three days ahead of a national conference
aimed at creating an interim assembly � widely considered a vital
step toward democracy. Iraqi officials have warned attacks could
intensify as the country tries to move forward.

Elsewhere, U.S. and other coalition forces were caught in fierce
gunbattles with militants in two cities.

A raid by Iraqi forces backed by U.S. and Ukrainian troops sparked
fighting in Suwariyah, southeast of Baghdad; 35 guerrillas and seven
Iraqi policemen were killed. Ten Iraqi police were wounded and 40
insurgents were captured, said Polish Lt. Col. Artur Domanski, a
multinational force spokesman.

In Ramadi, west of the capital, insurgents launched near simultaneous
attacks on several U.S. bases, wounding 10 soldiers. A guerrilla was
killed, and during the fighting a mortar hit an apartment building,
killing an Iraqi woman. Later, gunmen in the city fired on two U.S.
aircraft, damaging both and wounding a pilot, a military spokesman
said without specifying the type of craft.

The blast in Baqouba, an insurgent hotbed 35 miles northeast of
Baghdad, was the latest to cause heavy civilian casualties. Such
deaths have angered many Iraqis even as guerrillas insist their fight
is against U.S. troops and the new American-backed government. U.S.
forces have been trying to lower their profile and put Iraqi security
forces in the front lines.

"(The bombing) was once again an attempt by murderers to deny the
Iraqi people their dream of a peaceful country that rests on a solid
foundation of freedom," Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web
sites) said during a news conference in Cairo. "We have to condemn
it, we have to fight it. We must not let these kinds of tragic
incidents deter us from our goal."

Iraqi officials have expressed concerns that Saturday's national
conference will be a major target for attack. During the conference,
some 1,000 delegates are to put together an assembly that will work
alongside Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government.

"The terrorists' goal is to hamper the police work, terrorize our
citizens and show that the government is unable to protect the Iraqi
people, and this will not happen," said Hamid al-Bayati, a deputy
foreign minister.

The 10:13 a.m. bombing shattered the bustling heart of a commercial
district filled with shops, government buildings and the police
station.

Twenty-one of the dead were passengers on a white commuter bus that
was left a charred husk by the blast. Pieces of glass, twisted metal
and abandoned shoes, all covered in blood and human remains, were
strewn across the pavement, and a shop's white security gate was
splattered with blood.

Witnesses said the bomb targeted men waiting outside the al-Najda
police station trying to sign up for the force.

"While I was standing in the street, the car with the bomb drove by.
It went straight toward the young people queuing outside the police
station and exploded," a witness told Associated Press Television
News.

The blast killed 68 people and wounded 56 others, according to Saad
al-Amili, a Health Ministry official. "It's all civilian casualties
at this stage," U.S. Army Capt. Marshall Jackson said.

The local hospital was overwhelmed with the casualties. Every bed was
filled, forcing many of the injured to sit on the floor amid pools of
blood as frantic health workers treated them. One injured man sat
against the wall, holding his head in his hands and weeping.

The blast was one of the deadliest single bomb attacks in Iraq (news -
web sites) since the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) more
than a year ago. On Aug. 29, a car bomb exploded outside mosque in
the southern Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, killing more than 85
people.

This year, militants have carried out a number of devastating attacks
using multiple bombers. Coordinated attacks in north and central
Iraq � including Baqouba � on June 24 killed 89 people, including
three U.S. soldiers. On April 21, five suicide bombings near police
stations and police academy in southern city of Basra killed 74
people and wound 160 others. A coordinated attack on Shiite Muslim
shrines in Karbala and Baghdad on March 2 killed at least 181.

The large number of civilian casualties in attacks has angered many
and even raised questions on Internet forums used by Islamic
extremists, where the morality of killing Muslims who work for U.S.
coalition forces in Iraq has long been debated.

In an audio recording posted Wednesday on one such site, a speaker
purported to be the spiritual adviser of an Iraqi insurgency group
justified killing fellow Muslims when they protect infidels.

"If infidels take Muslims as protectors and Muslims do not fight
them, it is allowed to kill the Muslims," said the speaker,
identified as Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, spiritual leader of Tawhid and
Jihad, a group led by al-Qaida-linked militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The tape was recorded before the June 28 handover of power.

In other violence:

_ A U.S. soldier was killed and three others injured late Tuesday
when a roadside bomb severely damaged their armored Humvee while
patrolling the town of Balad-Ruz, about 40 miles northwest of
Baghdad, according to army spokesman Master Sgt. Robert Powell. The
soldier's death raised the toll of U.S. military personnel killed in
Iraq to 905 since the war began, according to an Associated Press
tally.

_ Insurgents fired a rocket Wednesday afternoon that landed near a
police station the Rahmaniya neighborhood of Baghdad, killing one
Iraqi and injuring four, the U.S. military said.

_ In the northern city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, gunmen in a car killed
policeman Udai Saddam as he waited for a taxi to get to work, Iraqi
police official Col. Sarhat Qadr said.




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