Philadelphia Daily News Urban Warrior Column: Urban Warrior | Bombs Rock Iraq As Sunni Bloc Quits Cabinet
By Chris Brennan, Philadelphia Daily News
Aug. 2–BAGHDAD — Baghdad shook with bombings and political upheaval yesterday as the largest Sunni Arab bloc quit the government and a suicide attacker blew up his fuel tanker in one of several attacks that claimed 142 lives nationwide.
The Iraqi Accordance Front’s withdrawal from the Cabinet leaves only two Sunnis on the 40-member body, undermining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s efforts to pull together rival factions and pass laws that the U.S. considers benchmarks toward sectarian reconciliation.
The U.S. military announced the deaths of four more American soldiers, including three killed in Baghdad on Tuesday by a powerful armor-piercing bomb. Washington says these types of bombs are sent from Iran. The fourth soldier was killed by small-arms fire on the same day. A British soldier also was killed Tuesday in a roadside bombing.
The American military announced that it had found a mass grave in Diyala province, northeast of the capital. The grave contained 17 bodies of mostly Sunni Muslims — including women, children and elderly people — killed by al Qaeda in Iraq, the military said in a statement. U.S. forces did not say how they knew where the attackers were from.
Altogether at least 142 Iraqis were killed or found dead, including 70 in three separate bombings yesterday in Baghdad. The violence came after July ended as the second-deadliest month for Iraqis so far this year, but with the lowest U.S. death toll in eight months.
Rafaa al-Issawi, a leading member of the Accordance Front, said the decision to pull out of government was sealed by what he called al-Maliki’s failure to respond to demands put forward by the Front last week.
Among the demands: the release of security detainees not charged with specific crimes; the disbanding of militias, and the participation of all groups represented in the government in dealing with security issues.
“The government is continuing with its arrogance, refusing to change its stand, and has slammed shut the door to any meaningful reforms necessary for saving Iraq,” al-Issawi said at a news conference in Baghdad.
“We had hoped that the government would respond to these demands or at least acknowledge the failure of its policies, which led Iraq to a level of misery it had not seen in modern history. But its stand did not surprise us at all,” he said, reading from a prepared statement.
The Accordance Front has 44 of parliament’s 275 seats, and those politicians will continue in the legislature. The withdrawal of its six Cabinet ministers from the 14-month-old government is the second such action by a faction of al-Maliki’s coalition.
Five Cabinet ministers loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr quit the government in April to protest al-Maliki’s refusal to announce a timetable for the pullout of U.S. forces from Iraq.
Yesterday’s deadliest attack occurred when a fuel tanker was exploded near a gas station in western Baghdad’s primarily Sunni Mansour neighborhood. At least 50 people died and 60 were wounded, police said. Earlier, a bomb in a parked car killed 17 civilians and left a yard-deep crater in a busy square in central Baghdad, police said. At least 32 people were wounded. Blood pooled on the street.
Thamir Sami, 33, was carrying clothes from his menswear shop out to his car when the bomb hit.
“Women and children were lining up near the gas station to get fuel,” he said. “I saw burnt bodies. Other motorists and I helped evacuate the wounded before the ambulances came.”
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