Turmoil......(From the Bahrain paper) [View All]

[SoCalDem]

Vol XXVII NO. 21 Saturday 10 April 2004

TURMOIL


BAGHDAD:

Bloody turmoil reigned in Iraq yesterday, the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall, with Sunni and Shi'ite rebels battling US-led forces and holding three Japanese and several other foreign hostages. Fierce fighting that has convulsed the Sunni cities of Fallujah and Ramadi reached the western fringe of Baghdad, where insurgents killed nine in an attack on a US fuel convoy, and said they had seized four Italians and two Americans.A journalist saw two captive foreigners in a mosque in a village in the Abu Ghraib district. One was wounded in the shoulder. Both men were weeping.At the scene of the convoy attack, a dead foreigner lay on the road with a bloody head as an Iraqi beat him.

Teenage fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles lurked on bridges or in derelict lots near the main highway leading west towards the embattled town of Fallujah.

snip.....

"America is the big devil and Britain and Blair are the lesser devils," a preacher at Baghdad's Um Al Qura mosque told an angry congregation. Reflecting a growing hostility to outsiders, one worshipper said: "When we get the order for jihad (holy war), no foreigner will be safe in Iraq."


*BAHRAIN yesterday called on all parties in Iraq to exercise self-restraint so that power could be transferred to the Iraqi people in June. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Mohammed Abdul Ghaffar said in a statement that Bahrain was following with deep concern the tragic developments in Iraq. He said the kingdom had a strong interest in seeing stability and security take root in the country and urged the rebuilding of Iraqi institutions to accommodate all Iraqi groups.