Tal Afar Bombing Kills 20 Wounds 70

Tal Afar Bombing Kills 20, Wounds 70
Did Coalition Ship 200,000 Guns to Guerrillas?

Guerrillas killed 11 persons on a busnear Baqubah Wednesday morning.

At least 30 Iraqis died in the civil war on Tuesday. Some 14 corpses showed up on the streets in Baghdad and Kut, according to al-Zaman.

Guerrillas killed at least 20 and wounded 70 with a truck bomb in Tal Afar, the northern Turkoman city that the US reduced in August of 2005.

In southern Baghdad, someone assassinated Sunni cleric Ra’id Muhammad al-Dulaimi.

The Mirror may be a tabloid, but it asks a good question: have 200,000 AK47s been delivered to the guerrilla insurgency by corrupt contractors instead of to the new Iraqi military? It is apparently a distinct possibility.

David Enders in Iraq has more at Salon.com on the attempt of Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement to model itself on Lebanon’s Hizbullah– i.e. services, politics and paramilitary all rolled into one.

Prime Minister Designate Nuri al-Maliki has announced some progress in forming a government. This has after 5 years become the sort of thing where we’ll believe it when we see it.