John Simpson (BBC): No reason for optimism in Iraq

[Jack Rabbit]

From the BBC Online
Dated Monday March 6

No reason for optimism in Iraq
By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs editor

Last Friday afternoon my BBC colleagues and I filmed at the Baghdad city mortuary.

A few months ago we would have done it as a matter of course. But now the security situation in Baghdad is so bad that we had to plan our trip with some care . . . .

The Washington Post reported that 1,300 bodies had been taken (to the mortuary) since the upsurge in sectarian violence which followed the bombing of the Shia shrine at Samarra on 22 February . . . .

By contrast the US commander in Iraq, Gen George W Casey Jr, insisted that there had been no great increase in the amount of communal violence and that the number of deaths was probably around 350.

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