For those of you who don’t know, the US encountered a new threat in Iraq today at roughly 11am Iraqi time. An unknown terrorist organization blew up a car bomb in front of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, killing 19 people and wounding 43. This attack on a “Soft Target”, an undefended civilian building, is such a radical departure from the attacks on the Americian Occupational Forces that they are certain it was not conducted by operatives of Hussein’s Baath party. Hussein’s men have limited their attacks exclusively against armed military targets and they seen no reason for them to shift their attacks against unaligned civilians (since there were no Americian troops in the vicinity). The car bomb was so powerful it damaged many of the surrounding buildings and threw the car onto the roof of a nearby building. It also fairly clear that the Baath operatives and the foreign terrorists are not working together and seem to be working towards different goals. In either case, they are definitely not co-ordinating their attacks. The fear is now that even if the US can located and remove operatives of the Baath Party, the violence in the region will not go away. Also, later in the day a US soldier was killed while guarding the upscale neighborhood al-Mansour in Western Baghdad. This, US forces are certain, was conducted by operatives of the Baath Party. Elsewhere in Baghdad, gunmen attacked a U.S. patrol on a busy shopping street, sparking a fierce gunbattle between Iraqis with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles and Americans with armored Bradley fighting vehicles. Two U.S. soldiers were reported wounded in the attack but it is comforting to know now that Uday and Qusay are dead that random acts of violence in the region have disappeared. As if in a pathetic attempt to exact some revenge, the US raided a market in Tikrit, killing two men carrying weapons and wounding two more who escaped. One of deceased was a suspected weapons dealer who actually opened fire on the US troops while the other casualty picked up a discarded AK-47 and attempted to flee the market with it. Two other men were wounded when they grabbed discarded AK-47’s and made a run for it. �When people pick up weapons and carry[] them freely, they become combatants and we will engage them,� said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, whose 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Battalion executed the operation. �I think we sent out a strong message today that you cannot walk around the streets with weapons.� Good for you. Planning on shooting anybody else in the back any time soon?
Terrorist Bombing in Iraq
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