Gorilla’s Guides

This is part 1 we’re still working on part 2.

Zeynab and Omar.

Reports From Baghdad

A police captain was shot dead in Dora as he prepared to go on leave with his family his name has not been released to the media. Source: اصوات العراق - مسلحون يقتلون ضابطا في الشرطة العراقية جنوبي بغداد

Fatah Basha Mosque Destroyed In Second Bombing Attack:

Bombers demolished the Fatah Basha Mosque in Central Bai’aa (west Baghdad). It was the second bombing attack on the Mosque in recent weeks - it was partially destroyed in a bombing attack using exactly the same methods last month. Eyewitnesses among local residents said that groups of armed men entered the Mosque at two in the afternoon having first posted guards outhside, they left after two hours. The bombs then detonated destroying the Mosque. One eyewitness described the explosions that occurred inside the Mosque as very powerful. 

The bombing has provoked a strong political reaction. The Iraki Peoples Party (one of the components of the Iraqi Accord Front) charged in a statement that armed militias stood behind the bombing and called on the Iraki government to fulfill its obligations to protect Mosques. They pointed out that their had been calls yesterday to protect Fatah Pasha Mosque and the other mosques in Bai’aa. And that they were “surprised” to find that this afternoon by “terrorist militias” were able to bomb Fattah Pasha Mosque causing a swathe of destruction ”amounting to fifty meters long.” The statement said that the bombers carried out their operation within “the sight and hearing of Interior commando forces … who cause terror and fear in the hearts of the region’s population.” The Iraqi Islamic Party is headed by Tariq Al-Hashmi, Vice President of the greenzone government. Source: اصوات العراق - مسلحون ينسفون مسجدا غربي بغداد

Other Baghdad Violence:

In the nightly mortar attacks in Baghad this evening shells fell in Al Amil, Mahmudiyah, and Bai’aa, without causing human casualties, the shell that landed in Salhia wounded one civilian. Source: اصوات العراق - سقوط اربع قذائف هاون في مناطق متفرقة من بغداد

The American army attempting to subjugate Irak announced on Thursday that four of its soldiers were killed while four others were injured over the past two days.

The killing of the four soldiers brings the total deaths in the American forces in Irak since the invasion led by the United States in March 2003 and until to 3498 dead … According to official data of the American army.

Out of this number 20 were killed  in the first three days of the month of June 2007.

The killing of 127 soldiers last month made May 2007 the third most fatal month for American soldiers in Irak since the Amercan invasion. 

The month of November 2004 saw the highest number of American soldiers attempting to subjugate Irak killed with 137 fatalaties. That was the month of the massacres of civilians in Fallujah by American soldiers. April of the same year (2004) came in second for the killing of American forces with 135 of their soldiers killed by people resisting the subjugation of Irak.

Source: اصوات العراق - مقتل وإصابة ثمانية جنود امريكيين في العراق

Reports From The Governorates

Again there are more reports we are working on.

At-Ta’mim (Kirkuk) Governorate

A child injured in the double suicide bombing 
of Mosques and Husseiniyah in Duquk is seen
here being carried after treatment in hospital
in Kirkuk. Most of the dead and wounded were
women and children.

The bombing toll of the double bombing of the mosques and Husseiniyah in  Kirkuk has risen to five dead and 26 wounded  45 casualties. 19 people are dead 26 wounded (Earlier reports gave lower casualties.) The bombings both targeted worshippers at Shiite mosques south of Kirkuk.

(Tameem village) was a coordinated attack. First a suicide bomber detonated his payload amongst worshippers followed by second bomb explosion 5 minutes later.

Sources:

1.  اصوات العراق - 45 قتيلا وجريحا الحصيلة النهائية لتفجيرات داقوق بكركوك
2. اصوات العراق - ارتفاع حصيلة انفجار داقوق الى خمسة قتلى و26 جريحا
3. اصوات العراق - مقتل وإصابة 18 مدنيا على الاقل في تفجير وسط حشود مصلين جنوبى كركوك 

Babil Governorate

The governor of Babil Salem al-Maslamawi survived an assassination attempt on Friday.Gunmen ambushed his car as he travelled the Baghdad highway for a meeting. The ambush took place near near Bridge 19 in Al-Mahawil bridge 19, about 60 km north of Al-Hilla. The gunmen fled under return fire from the governor’s bodyguards. Aswat Al Iraq say that residents said that two of the ambushers were wounded. Source: اصوات العراق - نجاة محافظ بابل من محاولة إغتيال فاشلة

Basra Governorate

Qurnah Market Bombing:

12 people were killed and 25 others were wounded today

 
Firemen putting out the burning cars
Qurnah market after the bombing. Friday in a bombing of Qurnah market north of Basrah.

(Earlier reports said 29 were wounded - Zeynab) Initial reports were very confused speaking of two bombings but from later reports it now appears that the second explosion was from a car about 70 metres from the first explosion that was one of 4 cars that caught fire and fuel exploded. Source: اصوات العراق - مقتل 12 وجرح 25 فى إنفجار مفخختين شمالى البصرة

(The report we have linked to says that most of the dead and were shopkeepers and craftsmen it looks from the reports that the bombers miscalculated the time for the bomb to go off it was early in the morning and the coutomers of market had not yet arrived. Omar) 

Dahuk Governorate

Eyewitness reports say that villages around Zakho in Dohuk governorate were subjected to shelling from the Turkish side of the botrder on Thursday evening, were accompanied by heavy automatic gunfire, there is also a report that Cobra helicopters overflew the area. There are no reports of any casualties. Local peshmerga confirmed the shelling attacks but refused to comment further. Source: اصوات العراق - شهود : المناطق الحدوية تتعرض لقصف مدفعي تركي

Diyala Governorate

Two police commanders killed a third wounded

A police motorcade on its way to Baqubah bringing police commanders in Diyalah governorate was bombed. Two police commanders were killed a third was seriously wounded.

The bombing in the Mohammed Sakran district (south of Baqubah) killed Khan Bani Saad chief of police Brig. Saed al-Aamri and one of his commanders - Lt. Colonel Mohsen al-Rifaei.

Col. Hashim al-Maamouri, police commander for the district in which the bombing took place was severely wounded.

Source: اصوات العراق - مقتل ضابطين وإصابة ثالث جراء انفجار عبوة جنوب بعقوبة

Police commander’s family abducted

Earlier in the day in Kanaan (40 Km South of Baqubah) armed men apparently fighters from the “Islamic State of Iraq” attacked the home of Col. Ali Ahmad 14 people mostly from his bodyguard and his wife were killed. Once the attackers overcame the bodyguards’ resistance they stormed the house and abducted 3 family member of the colonel including his daughter. Sources: اصوات العراق - مقتل ضابطين وإصابة ثالث جراء انفجار عبوة جنوب بعقوبة and: اصوات العراق - مقتل 14 في هجوم مسلح على منزل قائد شرطة ديالى

About:

Editor of the day: Zeynab.

Helper of the day: Omar.

Baghdad, June 8, (VOI) - An Iraqi magazine has announced June 12 as a national writing day for the Voices of Iraq correspondent Sahar al-Haydari who was killed on Thursday by unidentified gunmen in the city of Mosul.

The “Journal Iraq” online magazine said in a statement on Thursday that “it had decided to organize a national writing day for the assassinated VOI correspondent Sahar al-Haydari on June 12, 2007 to commemorate the journalist, which will be a symbol for the independent and free press.”

“Al-Haydari joined our team a few days ago and decided to write articles with her real name along with her image. She said “I was kidnapped and threatened while using a pen name, so I decided to write, mainly in Journal Iraq, with my real name,” the magazine also said.

“Sahar was using a nom de plume and when she used her real name in the first article for the Journal Iraq website she was certain that she would be a scapegoat for the free press,” the magazine noted in the statement.

“We know that we will be killed soon, but we wish to know the reason for this drama, which happens only to Iraqis,” the statement quoted Al-Haydari as saying during her first participation in the magazine.

There is big coverage of Al Sadr’s interview the Arabic language article covering it is here: اصوات العراق - الصدر يقول ان الدور العربي في العراق ضعيف وأنه لا يؤيد فكرة الانقلاب على الحكومة . We have put below the English article on Aswat Al Iraq. (There are some differences - a question of the taste of the translator in the words they use. Omar): 

Baghdad, June 8, (VOI) – Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr said the Arab role in Iraq is “very weak” and settles only for issuing statements of denunciation, also rejecting the idea of a coup against the government and terming it as an attempt to “eliminate Shiism in Iraq.”

“The Arab role in Iraq is divided into both positive and negative. The positive does not exceed statements of denunciation, while the negative is much more. At least the Arab silence about what is going on in Iraq is very negative,” Sadr said in an interview to the state-run TV al-Iraqiya late on Thursday evening.

Sadr did not deny plans to start a tour of Arab countries soon but said “Arab countries should go to Iraq because Arab countries need Iraq, not the other way round.”

“Iraq’s security will serve Arab countries’ own security because Iraq is now a battlefield for defending all Arabs and Muslims,” Sadr said in the interview, his first since he re-appeared two weeks ago in Iraq after he had kept a low profile for a few months.

Under mounting repression, courageous women fight for their rights and their lives. Is this how the U.S. brought “freedom” to the country?

by Bay Fang

Yanar Mohammed returned to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime because she thought the veil of tyranny had finally been lifted from her native country. She and two other women started the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), with the goal of fighting for women’s rights.

But since those days, her OWFI cofounders have fled the country, and Mohammed herself has received numerous death threats for her work. OWFI , one of the few remaining nongovernmental organizations left in Iraq, has been forced to operate in complete secrecy.

“Because of the chaos on the streets and in the government, women have been forced to leave work and hide at home,” says Mohammed, 47. “We live in a state of continuous fear—if our hair shows on the street, if we’re not veiled enough at work,” says Mohammed. “It’s a new experience for women in Iraq. After four years, it’s turned into Afghanistan under the Taliban.”

Throughout much of recent history, Iraq was one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East for women. Saddam Hussein and his Baath party encouraged women to go to school and enter the workforce. The constitution drafted in 1970 guaranteed women the right to vote, attend school, own property and run for political office.

The 1959 Law of Personal Status—which came into being thanks to a mobilization by Iraqi women after the end of British colonial rule—gave women equal rights to divorce, restricted polygamy, prohibited marriages under age 18 and ensured that men and women had the same inheritance rights.

These rights diminished somewhat after the 1991 Gulf War, partly because of Saddam Hussein’s new embrace of Islamic tribal law as a way of consolidating power, and partly due to the United Nations’ sanctions against the regime. After the sanctions were imposed, Human Rights Watch reports, the gender gap in school enrollment in-creased dramatically, as did female illiteracy (because, when faced with limited financial resources, many families chose to keep their girls home). According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in 1987 approximately 75 percent of Iraqi women were literate; by the end of 2000 that percentage had dropped to less than 25 percent.

Still, as bad as it was during Saddam’s time, women’s well-being and security have sharply deteriorated since the fall of his regime. Violence against women, both at home and on the streets, has spiked, as women are less protected legally and institutionally and standards of living have gone down. From 2003 to 2005, says Mohammed, she could meet with groups of 200 or 300 women at factories or the railway station. “But this year is completely different. A woman can’t even walk two to three blocks safely, much less [come to] a meeting.”

Today has been a day of blood in Irak - key to photos:

1. The body under the blanket is that of his 15 year old brother - killed in a mortar attack in Baqubah today.
2. They are sitting in front of what is left of their home which was destroyed in in the bombing of al Amil market which killed at least 25 people. The death toll is going to rise according to the spokesman at Yarmouk hospital.

Zeynab