Violence rages as rockets are aimed at British base
64 people were killed and over 100 more were wounded when what are believed to be two female suicide bombers detonated their payloads on Friday morning. The first was in a market in central Baghdad, which killed 46 people and wounded 82, and the second detonated in a market in southeastern Baghdad with 18 killed and 25 wounded.
In other news, rockets were aimed at a British base in Basra, at the airport. Two British soldiers were wounded, and according to Capt. Finn Aldrich, many more Iraqi casualties were reported. There are no numbers on the Iraqis as of yet. The British withdrew from Basra city for the most part back in September of 2007, and only officially handed the entire province back over to the Iraqis on December 16th, 2007. Before the pull out, the province’s police chief Major General Khalaf, had warned (dismissing fears for his own safety) that not only were his own ranks infiltrated by sectarian militants, but that the religious officials themselves were not doing enough to stop the bloodshed. He bluntly said that the they needed to encourage the militants to stop the violence. His outspokenness has earned him many assassination attempts, a larger one having wounded four of his guards in November of 2007. More to come on the nature of the intra-sectarian violence that permeates Basra in an upcoming post.
March 25th, 2008 at 4:50 am
[…] What first caught my eye was an article in the UK Daily Mail yesterday (which I think is little more than a tabloid, but occasionally they have a gem or two) that said in its headline ‘Rocket attacks dent hopes of bringing British troops home from Basra‘. As readers of this blog know, we have chronicled the Basra situation before, here and here. This is a very interesting dynamic, as there is a lot of intra-Shi’ite rivalries going on. In September, British troops pulled out of Basra city and retreated to the outskirts of the city, where they remain on the grounds of the airport. They are there and continue to train Iraqi forces. The Brits were forced out by rocket fire last year, and only symbolically handed over power of the province to the Iraqis in December. They had been out for quite some time. With the violence raging in Basra between Iraqi security forces and the militias today, it is an important time to examine this in more depth. […]