Iraq suicide attacks kill dozens

[Chico]

Posted by "fish".... Is that the same as the fish on the back of a volvo? Chico, who do you think you're kidding?

Aii? Spod you got the wrong end of the stick - when I post a terrorist attack story I always prefix it with a dig at the tree huggers and the terrorist appeasers. So this thread has nothing to do with moi.

[SupremeSpod]

well spotted - you are Inspector Morse I claim my 1 hours OT

Spend it well, my son.

[n5gooner]

Posted by "fish".... Is that the same as the fish on the back of a volvo? Chico, who do you think you're kidding?

well spotted - you are Inspector Morse I claim my 1 hours OT

[SupremeSpod]

Posted by "fish".... Is that the same as the fish on the back of a volvo? Chico, who do you think you're kidding?

[Board Game Geek]

awww, bless !

[fish]

A series of suicide bombings in Iraq has left dozens of people dead and about 100 injured.
At least 65 people were killed and 80 injured when two bombs exploded in two Shia mosques in the town of Khanaqin near the Iranian border, police say.

The bombers blew themselves up while hundreds of worshippers were attending Friday prayers.

Earlier, two car bombs killed at least six people outside an interior ministry building in Baghdad.

The attacks near in the central Jadiriya district injured at least 40 people and brought down a block of flats.

A hotel used by foreigners may also have been targeted in the attack.

A nearby interior ministry detention centre has been at the centre of a detainee abuse scandal.

String of attacks

The suicide bombs in Khanaqin, in north-eastern Iraq, are the latest in a string of attacks against Shia mosques in Iraq.

The BBC's correspondent in Baghdad, Jim Muir, says the attacks were intended as an act of sectarian provocation, as all the casualties must have been Shia Muslims at prayer.



"Two suicide bombers wearing explosive belts walked into the Greater and the Smaller Khanaqin mosques and blew themselves up," Diyala provincial council leader Ibrahim Hasan al-Bajalan told the AFP news agency.

The blasts in enclosed spaces, packed with worshippers, caused horrendous casualties, our correspondent says.

Hospitals throughout the region had to be mobilised to take in the wounded as local facilities could not cope.

Mr Bajalan said the two mosques had been completely destroyed and he expressed fears that many more casualties may be trapped beneath the rubble.

Security forces moved into the area shortly afterwards and imposed a curfew, AFP reported.

Khanaqin is a mixed Kurdish and Shia town near the Iranian border that was severely affected by the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

The town lies within a Kurdish-controlled area that has so far escaped much of the violence that has afflicted other parts of Iraq.

Alleged abuses

In Baghdad, the detainee abuse scandal was sparked five days ago, when US troops found 173 prisoners - some of whom had reportedly been tortured - in a bunker in an interior ministry building.

In the light of the apparently systemic nature and magnitude of the problem... I urge the authorities to consider calling for an international inquiry

Louise Arbour
UN Rights Commissioner


Arbour calls for probe

On Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called for an international investigation into the conditions for detainees in Iraq.


Most of the detainees are believed to be Sunni Arabs - the main group involved in the insurgency.

Sunni politician Saleh Mutlaq has accused the government of holding more than 1,100 prisoners at the ministry and suggested a number of them had been tortured to death.

He also called for the alleged abuses at the detention centre to be referred to international courts.