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/ 13 September 2006
Police found dozens of bullet-riddled corpses in Baghdad on Wednesday, and two car bombs killed 28 people and wounded scores more in the Iraqi capital as a wave of sectarian violence ravaged the country. At least 69 bodies were recovered in the past 24 hours from across Iraq, including 64 from Baghdad, many of them shot dead execution-style, security officials said.
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/ 2 September 2006
Iraq’s embattled coalition government was to set up a military headquarters to take command of its armed forces on Saturday, as a report from the Pentagon warned the country is close to civil war. The report painted a sombre picture of a still powerful anti-government insurgency and mounting Sunni-Shi’ite violence.
A Kurdish mother who lost a child to a poison-gas attack on her village nearly two decades ago cursed ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on Wednesday, the third day of his trial for genocide. ”May God blind them all,” cried 45-year-old Adiba Owla Bayez in court, pointing at Saddam and six co-defendants.
Bomb attacks around Baghdad killed at least 19 people and wounded 80 on Tuesday as insurgents defied a security crackdown in the Iraqi capital. The first blast echoed around the city at dawn, when a roadside booby trap ripped open a minibus and a taxi in the downtown Nahda area, killing nine people and wounding eight, an interior ministry official said.
The United States military said on Tuesday it had killed the ”right-hand man” of slain al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, describing him as someone who could have succeeded the Jordanian-born militant. Iraqi Mansur Suleiman al-Mashhadani was killed on Friday by US forces, said Major General William Caldwell, spokesperson of US-led coalition forces.
Al-Qaeda’s chief in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed in an air strike, United States and Iraqi officials announced on Thursday, hailing a major blow against the network’s bid to destabilise the country. The US military said al-Zarqawi was killed in an air strike on a safe house north of Baghdad where he was holding a meeting with fellow militants.
The trial of Saddam Hussein and his associates resumed on Monday with all eight defendants present and a resumption of defence-witness testimony. Presiding Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman began the session by announcing that the court would hear testimony from two witnesses for defendant Ali Dayih Ali, a minor Ba’athist official from Dujail.
Iraq’s leadership, including the Sunni Arab camp involved in efforts to forge a unity government, on Wednesday jointly condemned the defiant battle cry from al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "Al-Zarqawi has launched a genocide against the Iraqi people, branding the Shi’ites as rawafidh [rejectionists], the Kurds as traitors, and the Sunni Arabs as renegades," said President Jalal Talabani .
The trial of Saddam Hussein on charges of crimes against humanity resumed on Wednesday for a brief ten minute session without the deposed leader or any of the other seven defendants present. Chief Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman adjourned the session to April 17 after the shortest session of the trial since it began in October.
Three suicide bombers, two of them disguised as women, killed at least 79 people and wounded 164 as worshippers left a popular northern Baghdad Shi’ite mosque after weekly Friday prayers. The blasts marked the second major attack on Iraq’s majority community in as many days.