The total lock-down and curfew in Bagdad appears to be a complete failure. How much longer can that country endure this carnage?
Edit: Can my spelling get any worse? Corrections made.
Iraq renews emergency powers amid high body count by Paul Schemm
2 hours, 11 minutes ago, Minday, Oct, 2, 2006.
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Iraqi government has renewed its emergency powers amid mass kidnappings, dozens of corpses on the streets and the assassination of a high ranking officer in the intelligence service.
Colonel Faris Khalil of Iraqi intelligence was driving along in civilian clothes and an unmarked car on a Baghdad highway Monday, when gunmen roared up next to him and shot him dead, said the interior ministry.
The capital's dire security situation was further highlighted by a mass kidnapping carried out by gunmen dressed in military-style fatigues -- the second in as many days.
Of the two dozen people snatched in Sunday's mass kidnapping, 10 of them turned up dead in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Abu Chir, part of the 50 corpses found by police.
The British and US governments also announced the deaths of three US marines and a British soldier, as violence continued across the country.
For the past six months, Sunni and Shiite death squads have hunted civilians in each other's communities, leaving a grim toll on the streets -- at a rate of 100 dead a day across the country, according to UN and government estimates.
Parliamentarians, meanwhile, have been at loggerheads after revelations a senior Sunni politician's bodyguard had been implicated in a bomb plot against Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, the seat of the government.
In Monday's session, however, parliament speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani cut off further debate on the subject and forced the fractious deputies to focus on the legislative agenda, including renewing the long-running state of emergency for another month.
But Sunni parliamentarians said the emergency laws needed to be reviewed since they clearly were not improving the situation, alleging that security forces were corrupt.
Even after the measure passed with only 32 deputies out of 275 voting against, Sunni parliamentarian Hussein al-Falluji loudly disputed the action.
"If you don't stop arguing, I will have you ejected," said Mashhadani.
The atmosphere has been tense in parliament after the news of the bomb plot, and several Shiite deputies have called for investigations into Sunni politicians, suggesting they have links with insurgent groups.
The Sunnis riposted that Shiite political parties are sponsoring armed militias responsible for much of the midnight killings across Baghdad.
These shadowy armed groups, many outfitted with government-issue uniforms, carry out assassinations and kidnappings, such as Monday's near the technology university.
Seven government-style pickup trucks pulled up to the Sira computer store in broad daylight and took 14 people, both customers and employees, from the surrounding shops.
The biggest Sunni political party issued a statement accusing militias with official ties of both the computer store kidnapping and Sunday's kidnapping of 26 people from a food processing factory in southwest Baghdad's Amil neighborhood.
"The Iraqi Islamic Party asks how could 26 people, among them women, have been transported from Amil neighborhood to Abu Chir (where their bodies were found) through all those Iraqi and US army checkpoints and patrols?" asked the statement.
"This is the bloody wodeath and torturerk of the terrorist militias that constantly make people experience the color of ," it added.
But while there have been several moves into Sunni insurgent-infested neighborhoods in western and southern Baghdad, coalition forces have been hesitant to enter the teeming Shiite slum of Sadr City.
In other violence on Monday, a bomb in central Baghdad exploded killing one person and wounding four, and three soldiers from the Iraqi army's quick reaction force were killed in an ambush near Kut city, southeast of Baghdad.
A rain of mortars fell on an area just south of the city killing one person in the nighttime mortar duels that often take place between rival neighborhoods. A similar incident killed a person in the north of the city.
In Hilla, also just south of Baghdad, a civilian was killed in a drive-by shooting.
North of the capital, in the oil refining city of Baiji, a railway station worker was killed and two others kidnapped.
A convoy of trucks carrying petrol for the US army was hit by two roadside bombs, killing two drivers and leaving two trucks in flames, according to police in Tikrit. The US military could not confirm the incident.
Two people were killed in a two separate drive-by shootings half an hour apart in the northern oil city in Kirkuk that police say could have been the work of the same group of attackers.
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Edit: Can my spelling get any worse? Corrections made.
Iraq renews emergency powers amid high body count by Paul Schemm
2 hours, 11 minutes ago, Minday, Oct, 2, 2006.
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Iraqi government has renewed its emergency powers amid mass kidnappings, dozens of corpses on the streets and the assassination of a high ranking officer in the intelligence service.
Colonel Faris Khalil of Iraqi intelligence was driving along in civilian clothes and an unmarked car on a Baghdad highway Monday, when gunmen roared up next to him and shot him dead, said the interior ministry.
The capital's dire security situation was further highlighted by a mass kidnapping carried out by gunmen dressed in military-style fatigues -- the second in as many days.
Of the two dozen people snatched in Sunday's mass kidnapping, 10 of them turned up dead in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Abu Chir, part of the 50 corpses found by police.
The British and US governments also announced the deaths of three US marines and a British soldier, as violence continued across the country.
For the past six months, Sunni and Shiite death squads have hunted civilians in each other's communities, leaving a grim toll on the streets -- at a rate of 100 dead a day across the country, according to UN and government estimates.
Parliamentarians, meanwhile, have been at loggerheads after revelations a senior Sunni politician's bodyguard had been implicated in a bomb plot against Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, the seat of the government.
In Monday's session, however, parliament speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani cut off further debate on the subject and forced the fractious deputies to focus on the legislative agenda, including renewing the long-running state of emergency for another month.
But Sunni parliamentarians said the emergency laws needed to be reviewed since they clearly were not improving the situation, alleging that security forces were corrupt.
Even after the measure passed with only 32 deputies out of 275 voting against, Sunni parliamentarian Hussein al-Falluji loudly disputed the action.
"If you don't stop arguing, I will have you ejected," said Mashhadani.
The atmosphere has been tense in parliament after the news of the bomb plot, and several Shiite deputies have called for investigations into Sunni politicians, suggesting they have links with insurgent groups.
The Sunnis riposted that Shiite political parties are sponsoring armed militias responsible for much of the midnight killings across Baghdad.
These shadowy armed groups, many outfitted with government-issue uniforms, carry out assassinations and kidnappings, such as Monday's near the technology university.
Seven government-style pickup trucks pulled up to the Sira computer store in broad daylight and took 14 people, both customers and employees, from the surrounding shops.
The biggest Sunni political party issued a statement accusing militias with official ties of both the computer store kidnapping and Sunday's kidnapping of 26 people from a food processing factory in southwest Baghdad's Amil neighborhood.
"The Iraqi Islamic Party asks how could 26 people, among them women, have been transported from Amil neighborhood to Abu Chir (where their bodies were found) through all those Iraqi and US army checkpoints and patrols?" asked the statement.
"This is the bloody wodeath and torturerk of the terrorist militias that constantly make people experience the color of ," it added.
But while there have been several moves into Sunni insurgent-infested neighborhoods in western and southern Baghdad, coalition forces have been hesitant to enter the teeming Shiite slum of Sadr City.
In other violence on Monday, a bomb in central Baghdad exploded killing one person and wounding four, and three soldiers from the Iraqi army's quick reaction force were killed in an ambush near Kut city, southeast of Baghdad.
A rain of mortars fell on an area just south of the city killing one person in the nighttime mortar duels that often take place between rival neighborhoods. A similar incident killed a person in the north of the city.
In Hilla, also just south of Baghdad, a civilian was killed in a drive-by shooting.
North of the capital, in the oil refining city of Baiji, a railway station worker was killed and two others kidnapped.
A convoy of trucks carrying petrol for the US army was hit by two roadside bombs, killing two drivers and leaving two trucks in flames, according to police in Tikrit. The US military could not confirm the incident.
Two people were killed in a two separate drive-by shootings half an hour apart in the northern oil city in Kirkuk that police say could have been the work of the same group of attackers.
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Full Coverage: Iraq
Off the Wires
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