Juan Cole

Musayyib Death Toll Rises to Nearly 100 Reuters is reporting that the death toll from the gas station bombing in Musayyib on Saturday has risen to 98. It is now the second most destructive bombing since the Baath regime fell in 2003.

87 Dead in Iraq Attacks, over 100 wounded 3 British Troops Killed The Age reports that a suicide bomber in Musayyib killed at least 70 persons [according to late reports] on Saturday and wounded 82. The huge blast, at a gas station near a Shiite mosque in this town about an hour and a half’s […]

29 Dead, 111 Wounded in Wave of Bombings 2 Marines Dead, 7 US Troops Wounded Street Battles in Samarra Sameer Yacoub of AP reports that guerrilla violence killed 29 persons in Iraq on Friday.Near the Jordanian border, a roadside bomb killed two US Marines. The wave of bombings left 111 persons wounded. One bomb late […]

The London Bombing: Egypt, Pakistan and France Weigh In The Egyptian government has arrested Magdy Elnashar, an associate of the bombers in Leeds, a chemist in whose Leeds home police have found “large amounts of explosives.” Elnashar had left for Egypt recently. He maintains his innocence. My guess is that he would be Egyptian Islamic […]

The Ghost of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan John Aravosis at AmericaBlog brings up the awful possibility, based on an ABC report, that the Public Relations-hungry Bush administration may have interfered with a British and Pakistani investigation of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb London that ties into July 7. The question is whether Bush played politics […]

17 Killed, Mostly Policemen Sabrina Tavernisse of the New York Times managed to get the figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry on how many Iraqis are dying each month in violence related to the civil war. They estimate about 8,000 in the past 10 months, or 800 per month. This number appears not to include […]

Shiite Children Targeted Najaf Clerics Warn of Civil War Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times reports on the gruesome bombing in the poor Shiite “New Baghdad” district on Wednesday. US troops in the neighborhood attracted the interest of children. At first the soldiers tried to wave them away, but then gave in and handed […]

New Leads in London Bombing British police suspect that the four British/South Asian young men who carried out the London Underground bombings had mentors who came to the country from abroad, recruited them, trained them in bomb making, and then slipped out of the UK shortly before the operation. The main mentor appears to have […]

Breaks in the London Bomb Case British police on Tuesday began revealing the contours of their investigation of the London Underground bombings of July 7. The details were heart-wrenching. It appears that the foot soldiers for the operation, at least, were 4 British citizens of South Asian Muslim heritage from the city of Leeds, aged […]