9 soliders killed in day of attacks
In Saturday’s violence, gunmen opened fire on an army checkpoint just south of Baghdad, killing four soldiers and wounding four others. In another attack on a checkpoint near Muqdadiyah, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad, three soldiers were killed and one was wounded, police said. In the city of Tikrit, 80 miles north of the Iraqi capital, gunmen opened fire on an army checkpoint, killing two soldiers, police said. Also, a car bomb exploded in the southern port city of Um Qasr, said Anmar al-Safi, the media official at the port. He added that the explosion caused no casualties. Medical hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures.
Iraq’s prime minister warned Saturday that weapons and fighters flowing into Syria are now making their way to Iraq, as a rising wave of violence sweeps the country.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that weapons provided by some countries to the Syrian rebels and foreign fighters attempting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, are now ending up in Iraq.
“The weapons provided to those killers in Syria have been smuggled to Iraq and those wolves that came from different countries to Syria are now sneaking into Iraq,” he said during a youth gathering.
Al-Maliki said that this movement of weapons and fighters is adding to the violence in his country.
Iraq officially remains neutral in the Syrian conflict. The Shiite-led government in Baghdad has repeatedly called for a peaceful, political solution to the crisis, though it has also warned that a victory for the rebels would unleash sectarian war in Iraq and Lebanon.
The long and porous Iraqi-Syrian border runs along Iraq’s Sunni-dominated provinces of Anbar and Ninevah, and was a key conduit for arms and al-Qaida fighters in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Centuries-old cultural and tribal affiliations span the loosely defended desert frontier.
Iraqi border guards frequently clash with militants and smugglers who are attempting to move across the borders.
The drastic surge in violence — mainly car bombs planted by al-Qaida’s Iraq affiliate against the Shiite majority, and the security sweeps in majority-Sunni neighborhoods that follow — has claimed more than 3,000 people during the past few months.
Security forces have increasingly restricted the movements of Iraqis in and out of Sunni areas, relying on the neighborhoods listed on residence cards as an indicator of a sect. Sunnis also fear reprisals from reconstituted Shiite militias, groups once responsible for some of the worst of the sectarian carnage that gripped Iraq just a few years ago.
Many in Iraq fear similar sectarian bloodshed that almost tore the country apart after the U.S.-led invasion, bringing the country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007.
The recent carnage has grown so bloody, with the highest death toll in five years, that truck drivers insist on working in pairs — one Sunni, one Shiite — because they fear being attacked for their sect. Iraqis are numb to the years of violence, yet always calculating the odds as they move through the routine of the day, commuting to work, shopping for food, wondering if death is around the corner.
Even for the hardened residents of the capital, long accustomed to the intrusion of violence into everyday life, the latest upswing in attacks has been disorienting, altering life and routines in a manner that has cast a pall of fear over this city.
The targets of the attacks are not usually government ministries or luxury hotels, places many ordinary Iraqis can safely avoid. They are the markets and cafes, mostly in Shiite areas, that dominate neighborhood routines. During morning commutes, some Iraqis are taking circuitous routes to work to avoid central streets where bombs have struck. The sight of a Kia minivan, a vehicle of choice for bombers, caught in traffic causes fear. Neighborhood soccer teams are canceling matches because those too have become targets.
Police officials on Saturday reported attackers detonated explosives late Friday on a key oil pipeline linking Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan near the northern town of al-Shura, disrupting crude oil exports.
Teams have started work to repair the damaged pipeline, the police said.
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