Sadrist Funeral Targeted
The funeral targeted by a bombing that killed 47 and wounded 84 in Mosul was for “Hisham al-Araji, the Mosul representative for radical Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr.” The bombing might have just been targeting Shiites, or it might specifically have aimed at the Sadr movement, which has some support in northern Iraq among transplanted Arabs and Shiite Turkmen.
The Shiite religious parties and the Kurds reaffirmed that they had reached an accord on forming a new government, and that both were committed to the Transitional Administrative Law.
AFP reports a number of political assassinations:
In Baghdad a police chief, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Obaiss, was gunned down along with two of his companions as they drove through Darwish Square in the Al-Saidiyah neighbourhood according to hospital sources . . . Another police chief was killed south of Baghdad, said security sources. North of the capital, gunmen shot down the son of a tribal chief as he left a US base in Balad, said police Major Adel Abdullah. The man was identified as Hamad Suhail, the son of Sheikh Suhail Ahmed, the head of the Al-Makadima tribe around the town of Al-Dujail. A contractor was killed near Tuz as he drove to Tikrit and roadside bombs killed an Iraqi soldier and a civilian near Duluiyah and Baiji, security sources said. ‘
Tom Engelhardt considers the proposition that we are in World War IV, first put forward by former CIA director James Woolsey (who has since renounced that way of speaking).
Will be on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now 8 am Friday.