Blasts hit churches, hotel, hospital, in Baghdad

[JoFerret]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=nm/iraq_dc

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Explosions damaged churches and hit a hospital and hotel in Baghdad on Saturday in fresh challenges to Iraq (news - web sites)'s U.S.-backed interim government.

The government, trying to pacify the country before elections in January, has vowed to restore state authority in rebel bastions such as the Sunni Muslim city of Falluja, if necessary by force.

A rocket or mortar attack in the compound of the Ibn al-Bitar hospital in central Baghdad killed one person and wounded five, witnesses and hospital officials said.

A rocket struck the car park of the Mansour Melia hotel, where some foreign news organizations are based, damaging vehicles but causing no casualties.

Five churches were hit in a string of bomb attacks before dawn that were apparently meant to intimidate Iraq's small but deep-rooted Christian community, already shaken by a deadlier series of bombings of churches that killed 11 people in August
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[Fridays Child]

1. Kick and 5

[Judi Lynn]

2. Yesterday, the number of Americans killed in Iraq was 1094.

Really, really sad.

"FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH"
George Bush

[Zak]

3. 1094? That you know about.

I'll bet that the American death count is well over 2000, what we hear out of the Iraq quagmire is less than 10 percent of what is actually happening.