Strong Explosion Near Red Cross Building: Ambulance Explodes

Post-9/11 Era Forum

A strong explosion rocked Baghdad near the Red Cross building and thick black smoke was billowing from the area, witnesses said. At least two cars were on fire and U.S. troops were cordoning off the area.

The huge blast, which occurred shortly after 8:30 a.m. , came one day after a rocket attack on the Al Rasheed Hotel, where U.S. military and coalition officials lived. An American colonel was killed and 18 people were injured in the Sunday attack. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was in the building but escaped injury.

At least one other explosion could be heard Monday soon after the first one. It appeared the second explosion was in the area of the al-Shaab neighborhood.

Iraqi police said the first blast was caused by a car bomb at the International Committee of the Red Cross building near Andalus Street. Police shouted at the crowd to clear the area for fear another car bomb might be hidden in the area.

Reporters could see damage to the Red Cross building but it was difficult to judge the extent.

"We are aware of an explosion near the Red Cross building," a U.S. military spokesman said on condition of anonymity. "A quick reaction force was sent to the area."

Ghani Kadim, 50, a cigarette vendor, said he watched an ambulance move down the street toward the Red Cross building.

"As it entered the front gate of the compound, it exploded," he said.

Dozens of U.S. military and Iraqi police swarmed around the area and helicopters flew overhead.

Source: AP

IMPEACH BUSH!

I cannot stand to see all this carnage he has created!

I'm sick of this bull-****!.

3 US Soldiers died today
Rocket Launchers attacking American based Hotels
Bombs exploding at red cross killing 34

This is what happens, when you have an incompetent administration, who go invading countries unilaterally without the backing of the UN.

Coordinated Bombings Kill Dozens in Iraq
By CHARLES J. HANLEY

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A team of suicide car bombers, bent on death for ``collaborators,'' devastated the Red Cross headquarters and three police stations Monday, killing three dozen people and wounding more than 200 in the bloodiest day in Baghdad since the start of the U.S. occupation.

From north to south in this city of 5 million, the explosions over a 45-minute period left streetscapes of broken bodies, twisted wreckage and Iraqis unnerved by an escalating underground war. The dead included a U.S. soldier, eight Iraqi policemen and at least 26 Iraqi civilians.

``We feel helpless when see this,'' said an Iraqi doctor.

Iraqi and U.S. authorities in Baghdad blamed the coordinated quadruple blasts on foreign fighters intent on targeting those they accuse of collaborating with U.S. forces. One captive would-be bomber was said to carry a Syrian passport.

But in Washington, Pentagon officials said they believed loyalists of ousted President Saddam Hussein were responsible. President Bush said insurgents had become more ``desperate'' because of what he said was progress in Iraq.

The tactics suggested a level of organization that U.S. officials had doubted the resistance possessed. In past weeks, bombers have carried out heavy suicide bombings but in single strikes.

Not only were Monday's attacks coordinated, they also involved disguise: the use of an Iraqi ambulance in the Red Cross attack, a police car and uniform in a police station explosion.

The blasts, which echoed the Aug. 19 bombing of the U.N. headquarters here, left the Red Cross and other aid agencies examining whether they should decrease their presence in Iraq. Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres said it would reduce its seven-member expatriate team in Baghdad.

The differing theories about who was behind the bombings underscored the confusion generated by two days of bold, stunning attacks, beginning with a rocket barrage on a U.S. headquarters hotel Sunday that killed a U.S. colonel, wounded 15 other people and sent Americans scurrying to safety, including the visiting deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz.

Later Sunday, three U.S. soldiers were killed in two attacks in the Baghdad area.

Then, at 8:30 a.m. Monday, on a warm, clear morning beginning the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the first of four thunderous explosions rocked the city.

A police car, somehow commandeered for a suicide mission and driven by a man in police uniform, blew up after entering the courtyard of the al-Baya'a police station in southern Baghdad, said police Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister.

Officers said the blast killed 15 Iraqis and one U.S. soldier, and the U.S. military said six other Americans were wounded. American troops have been working with Iraqi police and guarding the stations.

Just five minutes later, a second blast struck the local headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a small, three-story building on a quiet street in central Baghdad. This bomber, too, used a subterfuge - an Iraqi ambulance that apparently was able to approach the ICRC offices without suspicion.

``I saw this ambulance driving up toward the Red Cross, and then suddenly it blew up,'' said cigarette vendor Ghani Khadim. The vehicle stopped 60 feet from the front of the Red Cross building, at a protective line of earth-filled barrels, and disintegrated as it blew a 15-foot-wide crater in the road.

The blast knocked down a 40-foot section of the ICRC's sandbag-backed front wall, demolished a dozen cars and apparently broke a water main, flooding the streets. The building's interior was wrecked - a scene of shattered glass, doors blown off their hinges, toppled bookcases and collapsed ceilings.

More than 100 staff members normally would have been inside, but starting time had been changed to 9 a.m. because of Ramadan, and probably only one-quarter of the normal staff was present. Red Cross headquarters in Geneva said 12 people were killed, only two of them employees, believed to be security guards, and the rest apparently passers-by.

The Red Cross and other aid organizations reduced their Baghdad staffs after the car bombing at U.N. headquarters that killed 23 people.

``Of course we don't understand why somebody would attack the Red Cross,'' said Nada Doumani, Baghdad spokeswoman for the ICRC, an organization that has long strived for political neutrality.

Two buildings away, the explosion devastated the interior of a private clinic operated by Dr. Jamal F. Massa, who had been planning to open it as a full-fledged hospital next month. ``We feel helpless when we see this,'' he said of the ICRC bombing. He couldn't understand why the Red Cross was targeted, he said, since ``this only hurts guards and other Iraqis.''

Twenty minutes after the ICRC attack, another car bomber detonated his explosives-packed vehicle at a police station near a marketplace in north Baghdad.

After another 20 minutes, the fourth suicide bomber struck in southwest Baghdad, at the al-Khudra police station, destroying the front of the building.

Besides the dead, at least 224 people were reported wounded in the four attacks, including 65 policemen, Ibrahim said. The 34 dead he reported apparently did not include the American soldier the U.S. command said was killed at al-Baya'a, nor was it clear whether he was counting the four suicide drivers.

At 10:15 a.m., yet another bombing was attempted, at a police station in the eastern district of New Baghdad, where officers managed to spot and stop a Land Cruiser driver from detonating his explosives. The man set off a grenade that wounded an officer and himself, and when he was seized, ``he was shouting, `Death to the Iraqi police! You're collaborators!''' said police Sgt. Ahmed Abdel Sattar.

Ibrahim said the man carried a Syrian passport and told officers he was Syrian. ``Some countries, unfortunately, are trying to send people to conduct attacks,'' the deputy interior minister said, without naming those nations.

Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, an assistant commander of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, which occupies Baghdad, agreed that ``foreign fighters'' were prime suspects in the bombings. ``I think that's a reasonable supposition,'' he said. ``That's something we'll look closely at in the next few days.''

Nevertheless, the latest attacks illustrated the disparate nature of the resistance - from hit-run guerrillas, perhaps Saddam loyalists, who are staging an average of 26 low-profile attacks on U.S. forces daily, to bombers, perhaps Islamic extremists, staging suicide terror strikes.

The resistance is believed also to include Iraqis who simply resent the U.S. military occupation of their country or who have grievances over what they see as U.S. brutality against friends and neighbors.

One such incident may have occurred Monday in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, where witnesses said U.S. troops opened fire on bystanders, killing at least four Iraqi civilians, after a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. military convoy passed. The U.S. command did not confirm the incident or report any U.S. casualties.

In Washington, after the Baghdad bombings and after meeting with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq, Bush said he remains ``even more determined to work with the Iraqi people'' to restore peace to this troubled land.

The string of bombings made Monday the bloodiest day in Baghdad since the fall of Saddam's rule in April. The single deadliest attack in Iraq during the U.S.-led occupation took place Aug. 29, when a car bomb exploded in Najaf, killing Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and more than 80 others.

Tough tOOties, Searchie! President to ‘stay the course’ in Iraq:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — President Bush blamed foreign terrorists and loyalists of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for recent devastating attacks in and around Baghdad, saying Tuesday that he was not surprised by their tactics and promising that the United States would “stay the course” in Iraq.

AmeriKOOK sound like a parrot sitting on Bush's shoulder.

AmeriKOOK's nose is jammed up Bush's ass.

Clearly, its going to be a world-wide disaster if a democrat comes to White House. You losers better pray for Bush to stay in the office.

I have just read an article dealing with the US indebtment. The global debt, according to the calculation carried out by a bunch of economists led by former Treasure Secretary Paul O'Neill, would amount to 44000 billion dollars (public and private debt). It grows at a rate of 5% per year. TREMENDOUS.
Each American is indebted of 220000 dollars.
This is a major concern: the risk of depreciation of the dollar is huge; if this was to happen, the world economy would be seriously endangered. And the US global richness would drop this low that tens of millions of people would be trown into poverty. It is highly time to stop printing banknotes and act accordingly: our common future standard of living depends on urgent appropriate actions. Economically speaking, this Bush administration is a failure.

Bush was a C student at his best in college. Every perk he got in his life was because of daddy. He had absolutely no experience in foreign affairs and he’s made a fiasco of that.

As for domestic affairs, I don't know if any of these party-liners want to remember the Savings & Loan scandal out in Texas in which the Bush sons robbed it to the point of bankruptcy. 500 billion dollars gone just like that. Then as they left the taxpayers here in the rest of the country footing the bill to bail it out. Bush Sr. Pardoned the whole lot of them in 92 just before he left office because he didn't want the case in the hands of Clinton. His excuse for the pardon? "We as a nation need to put this behind us". Can you believe that? And they talked about Clinton's pardons when Bush Sr. pardoned not only them, but everyone involved in the Iran/Contra episode in which he was deeply involved in.

Oh, and lets not forget Enron shall we? Another venture out of Texas Bush had dealings with.

Now that he's president, he's robbing the tax payers again with his tax cuts for himself and his cronies all while spending 100’s of billions in Iraq, in which Dick and his boys are getting a large chunk of by sending his contractors over there to do “reconstruction”. And you wonder why the economy is in ruins? Everything Bush touches seem to go into deep debt or bankruptcy. It's tied to his history and his name.

This is the one whom MrJukoVette & AmeriKOOK says is our great leader. If we did the things he and his daddy's done, we would have been in jail for years instead of running a county. How in the world can any of you party-liners trust anything coming out of his mouth?

Economy was going down before Bush became a president, his tax cuts affect each and every class of population in the US, and 2 3rd world countries gained freedom and prosperity. Ones who argue against tax cuts are those who want to raise them no matter what's the situation. Bush also lowered bureacracy and he is against gay marriages. A president like Bush is needed in Canada, ASAP.

Removing tax on dividends creates a tax-free source of income. If people start buying stocks that's even more money going into economy and more money for regular americans to earn. Billions going to rich people will actually stay on their bank accounts, which will lead to banks investing more money into economy.

What is a democrat going to do when coming to White House? Withdraw troops in Iraq either throwing the country into chaos or giving UN more authority - at the same time letting them secure their business in Iraq. Remember US invites investors from all over the world. Raise taxes, sending economy in a knock-down; liberalise society, bringing some hot stuff like public healthcare and legal drugs.
Think twice before voting - my advice is Bush.

Unbelievable

You sound just like Reagan and his "trickle down economics" plan. Problem with that is it never trickled down. The gap between the rich and lower classes had widened, and the economy was a mess then too.

Isn't it a coincidence that under Reagan, Bush Sr. the economy sucked? Clinton came along and we had unbelievable growth. Deficit forecast was changed to a surplus. Hasn’t had that since Truman days. Then we get Bush Jr. in office and BANG!!! Economy is in ruins again!!!

Something here isn't right MrJ. The facts speak well over opinion. These are just the facts. Everything Bush Jr. touches turns into unbelievable debt. I really didn't expect him to run the country any different than he ran Texas and S&L.

You need to pick a new hero.

Investing more money into economy ... but what about is this money is this depreciated that people fall massively into poverty ? Do you have any idea of what is at stake ? In comparison, the stock exchange drop of 2000 would look like a joke. The Federal Reserve, on the false pretense of fighting deflation, printed thousands of billions of new dollars within the past years. As everyone knows, the dollar is no longer correlated to gold reserves since the renounciation to the post-WW2 Bretton Woods agreements by Nixon in 1971.
What does it mean ? The dollar's value relies on the confidence the world economy grants to it.
Every American spending 1 dollar gives 50 cents to foreign industries. The main beneficiaries are the Chinese; furthermore their currency sticks to the dollar actually.
The Fed finance the deficit by selling on the world market federal expenditures (T-bonds, ...) ... precisely bought by the ones that sell goods to the US. In other words: the US borrows money to the people who in return sell them their products. How to make the debt drop ? By printing more money: the created inflation will make the bonds cheaper in the long run, as the interests will hardly compensate it. Question: how long will the foreign creditors accept to be fooled like this ?
How do right-winders comment the eventuality to become dependent on chinese subsidiaries to finance wars waged abroad ?
Manufactured goods are lesser and lesser made in the USA, while the technological gap with the vendors diminishes, and more and more disappears ... worst, in some cases the know-how belongs to foreigners.
You have got the perfect equation for a massive danger:

- a currency which value over other ones might drop dramatically overnight,
- average American people massively indebted themselves, while their government owes itself huge amounts of money on behalf of them,
- American industry seriously crippled because of an unfair competition led by countries such as China, coupling their currency artificially to the dollar,

What will the future be made of ?

All of us westerners are in danger right now because of this unsteady situation. Wake up American friends, the solution is not tax-cutting at the sole advantage of rich people, but efficient economical policy backed by sustainable development principles.

This does not apply only to the dollar, but also to energy savings for example (replacement of oil by hydrogen is a false good idea since the global yield is worst that the classical process, while the beneficiaries are the oil companies - you know now why Bush defends this "ecological" path, while in parallel he refuses to ratify the Kyoto protocole)

oneofpeace

That is the difference between us, and most of them (with certain exceptions such as sayak21 & charles etc,)

We speak from our heart, and come to conlcusions after reviewing all the facts. You guys speak for the government, and let the government conclude all your facts.

"Oh the Bush Administration has been sent from Heaven! Why would people cause harm in this world? Bush is great, and he would never do anything bad. "

Its pathetic, that people believe everything a small group of people tell them. It reminds me of a cult

Not only that, Searchie, but as the inumbent he will likely be re-elected. Happy Halloween! See you at the polls in November, 2004.

...oh by the way. That's what Bush's daddy said.

You say something, oreo? Sorry, all I see is: 'This person is on your Ignore List.'

I'm sure you know good and well what I just said AmeriKOOK.

Why else would you reply? Now I know why you and Bush get along so well. You're both liars.

....oh yeah, did I mention how broken up I am about being on your Ignore list?

....Ok I'm over it.

What? Can't hear ya.....(shrug)

See you at the polls, keremiko.... you don't like it, use your "freedom-given" right to change it.