Bombers Lure Pilgrims With Cakes as Shiite Holiday Turns Bloody

[Zenlitened]

Bombers Lure Pilgrims With Cakes as Shiite Holiday Turns Bloody

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. (New York Times)
Published: March 7, 2007

BAGHDAD, March 6 — Suicide bombers who lured unsuspecting pilgrims with cakes, and gunmen firing out of passing cars turned preparations for a Shiite Muslim religious celebration into a day of carnage on Tuesday. At least 109 Shiite pilgrims were killed and more than 200 wounded with the death toll continuing to rise.

The American military also announced an unusually high death toll for American soldiers: nine killed on Monday, including six soldiers riding in two vehicles who died from the same huge bomb blast north of Baghdad.

The attacks demonstrated that Sunni militants could still wreak grave damage inside or outside the capital even as the American-backed Baghdad security plan entered its fourth week. And they immediately drew Shiite calls for reprisals.

(snip)

By early Wednesday morning no groups had taken credit for the attacks. In the chaotic aftermath of the Hilla blasts, survivors accused not just Sunni terrorists of carrying out the attacks but also blamed the Iraqi police and American forces for allowing it to happen.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?hp

[liberal renegade]

1. Just another day

in paradise........

[soothsayer]

2. let them eat cake. dayum. Cold.

[ashling]

3. FOX Noise Headline:

Homicide Bombers Attacks Use Niger Yellowcakes

:rofl:

[jollyreaper2112]

4. that's just fucked up

I can understand suicide bombers stuck in their own heads, reciting their prayers and in a dream-like state before blowing up, a coping mechanism when dealing with extinction. I can also understand them being nervous and jittery and wanting to back out but not wanting to lose face before their fellows and Allah. But what's really fucked up is when they can be calm, affable, chitchatty. A few years back a bomber took his truck down to where day laborers gathered. He started chatting them up like he was just another contractor with work available. When he got a nice proper crowd around he detonated his bomb and killed scores of people.

I guess it just goes to show that the amount of bullshit people can swallow would astound even a german scat queen.

I wonder what the bus bombers in London were like before they tried to blow their charges. There was video of one of them who had a dud bomb. There was a woman with a baby nearby and he's desperately trying to get teh charge to go off. I wonder what he was like before zero hour came, was he chatting and smiling with everyone else like he didn't have a care in the world?

[Az_lefty]

5. Laura say's "it's just a bomb a day"

sure, every thing's going just fine.