Blasts in Baghdad as US faces Shia resistance

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http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2006/July/focusoniraq_July157.xml§ion=focusoniraq

BAGHDAD - Bomb blasts echoed around Baghdad on Saturday as sectarian death squads pursued their bloody work and the US military warned that it was facing stiffer opposition in formerly cooperative Shia areas.

The US troops’ most deadly foe remains Sunni insurgents -- four marines were killed in the mainly Sunni province of Anbar on Thursday -- but the coalition is now drawn increasingly into clashes with powerful Shia militias.

This trend is all the more ominous given that US commanders have decided to put around 4,000 additional troops into the mainly-Shia capital to try to halt a surge in murderous bomb and gun attacks by rival sectarian gangs.

Just southeast of the capital, police found at least 12 civilian corpses, most of them kidnapping victims who had been tortured and shot.

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1. April 2003 Whitehouse Web Site bush talking in St. Louis

* 4/2003 military resistance is virtually ended; Iraq has been liberated

Today, organized military resistance is virtually ended; the major cities of Iraq have been liberated. (Applause.)

Thanks to the courage and the might of our military, the American people are more secure. Thanks to the courage and might of our military, the Iraqi people are now free.

7/30/06

U.S. Forces now facing both Sunni & Shi ite forces in Baghdad