Guerrilla War Still Going Strong

Guerrilla War Still Going Strong:
Guerrillas kill 26, Wound 74 in Seven bombings, Other Attacks

Al-Zaman [Ar.]: The Iraqi governent says that during the seven days ending on Sunday, guerrillas launched 111 attacks on Iraqi army and police and on US and Coalition forces. These attacks left over 100 Iraqis dead and over 200 wounded.

The bloody totals for victims of guerrilla violence in Iraq on Monday can only be arrived at by combining press reports. Even then, I’m sure not all the wounded are accounted for, since wire services tend to report mainly deaths. The limitations of those Western sites that count casualties according to Western reports are suggested by how limited a lot of the reporting is. And, surely a fair number of those wounded in these attacks later die, and these are never reported in the Western press.

What follows is drawn from this AFP report, and another one from Reuters., and finally this CNN article. Here is what the whole sanguinary thing looks like at the end of Monday:

*A suicide bomber on a bus in Shiite Kadhimiyah killed 12 and wounded 9.

*Also in Baghdad, guerrillas set off a car bomb in the Diyala Bridge area in an attempt to assassinate the district head of that municipality, killing 2 and wounding 11. The politician escaped, but two of his security guards were the ones killed.

*Guerrillas set off a bomb near a group of laborers in Baghdad, wounding at least 19.

*Guerrillas set off two roadside bombs in East Baghdad as a Western convoy went by, wounding 11 persons, including two foreign contractros.

*A roadside bomb in central Baghdad wounded 2 policemen.

*About an hour’s drive north of Baghdad, guerrillas in 15 cars attacked a truck convoy bearing supplies to a US military base, firing rockets and spraying machine gun fire. They killed 5 Iraqis. [This is a big, brazen attack near the capital.]

*In Mosul, a bomber left behind his payload at the Abu Ali Restaurant, killing 5 and wounding 21.

* Guerrillas ambushed a civilian motorist in Balad, killing him.

*Guerrillas near the Shiite holy city of Karbala used a roadside bomb to kill a US soldier.

*A roadside bomb in Iskandariyah south of Baghdad wounded yet another policeman.