This child’s name is Abdullah Abdul Rahman. He is seven years old.

The photograph of Abdullah crying as a doctor bandages the stump where he once had a hand was taken by Adil al-Khazali in al-Kindi hospital today January 2oth 2008.

The caption supplied by AP with the photo says that Abdullah was one of the people wounded when a bomb hidden in a rubbish pile near a busy restaurant in Sadr city exploded yesterday evening. It explains that at least 2 were killed and 10 wounded.

Local radio reports say the bomb was targeting a police patrol and say that 3 people have now died as a result and that 11, among them Abdullah, were seriously wounded.

Khaled.

There will be no further postings tonight.

Khalil.

5 million Iraqi orphans, anti-corruption board reveals

Baghdad - Voices of Iraq

Saturday , 15 /12 /2007  Time 6:32:11

Baghdad, Dec 15, (VOI) – Iraq’s anti-corruption board revealed on Saturday that there were five million Iraqi orphans as reported by official government statistics, urging the government, parliament, and NGOs to be in constant contact with Iraq’s parentless children.

“The government should set up an institutional or legislative program to help the Iraqi orphans. Iraqi is an oil-rich country and it is not acceptable that its orphans remain groaning in this tragedy,” the anti-corruption board chief, Moussa Faraj, said during a conference in Baghdad dedicated to orphans in Iraq.

“The board on its own cannot meet the Iraqi orphans’ needs, but there should be an organization or even a ministry to provide care for orphans,” he said.

The Iraqi parliament’s women & family committee had proposed a draft law to set up a fund for the orphans.
During the conference, Wijdan Salem Mikhail, the Iraqi minister of human rights, said in a speech that the phenomenon “is one of the most passive things that grew immensely during the past few years due to destructive wars and unbridled violence in the country to unprecedented heights.”

“These factors have logically caused the number of widows and orphans to greatly increase,” she said.

Aswat Aliraq

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Khalil

There will be no posting today — funerals

Khalil

• The political war of words between Turkey and the Kurds continued to heat up today.
• Iraki Muslim scholars held a conference at which they founded an organisation to promote Muslim and Iraki unity.
• Twenty eight bodies were discovered in Baghdad.
• 76 unidentified and unclaimed bodies were buried brought from a morgue in Baghdad and buried in al-Wadi al-Jadid bringing the total of such funerals in al-Wadi al-Jadid since May 2006 to 2560.
• There is yet another operation being mounted to pacify al-Fadil in central Baghdad.
• 8 green zone government soldiers and 4 green zone government police have been wounded.
• Two civilians killed and the wounding of ten others in a bomb in Zafaraniyah. Two brothers shot dead in Zafaraniyah.
• Abdullah al-Aadhab the local leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq armed group and his deputy killed in a raid in Adhamiya northern Baghdad.
• In Kirkuk the city’s police force detained a gang of three members accused of abduction and murder and freed the gang’s hostages. One of the three gang members is a policeman
• In Basrah the “permanence” of the British “reforms” of the police was clearly demonstated by an announcement from the green zone government interior ministry that they were forming a new police regiment of 250 members to be recruited: “under the [procedural] controls in place at the Ministry of Interior.”
• A suicide truck bomber attacked the home of local police brigadier Brigadier Ali Attallah near Mosul wounded 11 people in the attack including two of the Brigadier’s nephews.

Scenes From An Iraki Childhood And Personal Comment

I am a Muslim, I am Iraki. It breaks my heart to see the evil unleashed upon my people, my country, our children, by the cynical and evil men and women who rule America and who seek to rule us. To put their feet on our faces and on the faces of our children.

It breaks my heart to read the reports that I read every day, to hear the reports on the radio. To go out at night with other men from our neighbourhood to stand guard at a checkpoint to stop the deathsquads coming in. It breaks my heart when we distribute the pathetic food rations to see how desperate people are for food and water when we can get it. It breaks my heart seeing and hearing the mothers with their children begging and pleading for more water and more food. It breaks my heart when they ask if we have rehydration kits for their children or water purification tablets and to say “no, we have none today. ” It breaks my heart to see how much smaller than they should be the children in the quarter where I work are.

It seems to me sometimes that even the memory of happiness is gone from my life. But today I was going through Firdous Square. I saw the photograph to the right being taken and stood and watched the children play in the waters of the fountain in front of the Mosque.

For a while today while I watched I remembered happiness and was happy.

Khalil Ibn Hussein,
Baghdad,
Irak.

Baghdad

Muslim scholars announced on Monday the establishment of an Islamic union with the aim at stopping bloodshed and sectarian violence in Iraq.

(more…)

The bomb that exploded near al-Ghazalani cemetery in al-Sheikh Omar industrial zone (central Baghdad,) killed one civilian dead and injured three. The wounded were taken to al-Kindi hospital. Four civilians were injured in a grenade attack by near Mustansiriyah University.

There have been violent clashes all day in Mosul, and all over Mosul. The city is now under curfew.

Also in Ninawa the bridge at Badush has been destroyed in a twin suicide bombing attack. [This is a serious attack. Badoush bridge 20 km west of Mosul connected Mosul, which is the governorate’s capital city to Tal Afar and Rabia.]

Still in Ninewa there has been yet another jail break five prisoners killed two policemen and managed to escape jail while being moved from jail to al-Tasfirat hospital this afternoon.

Again in Ninewa the Americans arrested a man in his 80’s during a search near Mosul. Kamal Abdul Baqi an 80 year old blind and handicapped retired teacher refused entry to his home of an American search party using dogs during a series of searches of his part of Mosul. The Americans arrested him. [Non-Muslim readers should note that dogs are considered to be unclean by Muslims.] 

A mother and baby were shot in East Mosul the mother has died of her wounds the baby is seriously wounded.

In the southern governorate of Dhi Qar there are intensive efforts being made to halt thefighting in al-Nassiriyah between the Mahdi militia and the SIIC (SCIRI) dominated, green zone government forcess. So far the local hospital has received ten dead, including two policemen, and 45 wounded most of them civilians. Locals say the numbers are higher than this because families took their wounded to Basrah for treatment there. The context of this is that the local security forces are entirely dominated by SIIC and the accusation and detention of a Sadrist leader are political moves to try to prevent the Sadrists gaining control of the province. In retaliation for the detention of the Mahid milita leader the home of the emaergency squad was attacked with RPgs.
The Mahdi militia have siezed control of the police station and bridges at Shatrah and tightened their control of Al Gharraf.  
There is a lenghty report on the fighting and the attempts to resolve it in English here. The Information in this posting is from here and various local reports.

In Diyala the toll from the bombing Abu Saida of market (Abu Saida is about 40 km north of Muqdadiya) suicide bombing is now known to be at least 32 civilians killed and 33 others wounded. (Later unverified reports give higher tolls.)

Basem Abdul Elelah al-Muaadedi an engineer who was a member of the Compensation and Reconstruction Committee was shot dead in al-Andalus (Central Fallujah) this afternoon. (The Compensation and Reconstruction Committee is American founded and run.)  Violent confrontations erupted between gunmen and green zone government forces south of Fallujah this morning. The fighting started when a patrol was ambushed.

The bomb near Huwiyjah technical institute (70 Km southwest of Kirkuk) wounded one green zone government policeman. Ibrahim Abdallah Hassan  and Anwar Abdullah Hammoud were both of them village representatives were shot dead today near Kirkuk 

A child was killed and two other people were injured when a protest meeting in Basrah about the deteioration in the electricity supply was fired upon. According to the report witnesses said it is not clear who fired. (This is often code for it was the police who opened fire.)

The central court in Wasit has sentenced 6 people to death.

4000 refugee families in Karbala began receiving food and other essentials such as blankets in humanitarian aid today.

Khalil

Update:

9 mortar shells landed in green zone. 6 wounded.

Mohammed