Miguel
Advanced Member
Member # 47
|
posted
Women Suicide Bombers Parade in Baghdad
Agence France Presse
BAGHDAD, 16 March 2003 — Tens of thousands of Iraqis protested yesterday in Baghdad and other cities hoping that war can still be averted as the regime stepped up arms cooperation after handing over a report on deadly VX chemical agents. In the capital, the protests organized by the ruling Baath Party and unions, caused huge traffic jams as thousands, including children, marched carrying portraits of President Saddam Hussein and banners to his glory.
Some 30 would-be women suicide bombers, dressed entirely in black, paraded with their faces hidden. The group wearing belts across their chest stuffed with TNT explosives, are members of the paramilitary “Saddam’s fedayeen” who declared themselves ready to attack US forces.
In Baghdad’s wealthy Al-Mansur district, men carried Kalashnikov rifles and burned an effigy of US President George W. Bush as well as US Stars and Stripes flags. “No war for oil” read banners. “Saddam Hussein is the voice of the Arab nation in defiance of the US and Zionist war”, said others.
Official media also reported demonstrations in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, in southern Iraq, and Tikrit, Saddam’s stronghold in the north, close to where he was born. With the United States making a final diplomatic push for a war resolution from the United Nations, protests were planned for yesterday across the world.
“We are your soldiers, Saddam, where will America get through?” youths chanted in Kerbala. “Lead on Saddam — quitting is not an option” said a banner carried by one of the 3,000 or 4,000 marchers in Kerbala, which has a population of about three quarters of a million people. “Saddam is Iraq ... Iraq is Saddam,” said another.
Waving AK-47 assault rifles, checkered keffiyehs, Iraqi flags, tribal banners and pictures of Saddam, they paraded past Kerbala’s governor, General Latif Mahal Humoud. “These are the Shiite people,” Humoud told Reuters. “If the evil (Americans) invade Iraqi territory, the children, women and men of Kerbala will fight them.”
In a Kerbala cafe, religion rather than politics appeared the driving force behind opposition to the United States. “America is the enemy of Islam, not the enemy of the government,” said Ahmed, a shopkeeper sipping a cup of tea. “If the Americans come they will take the abaya (veil) off our women. We will not accept this. Death would be better,” said Ghazi Husseini. Iraqi officials said marchers also took to the streets of Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, and the southern city of Basra.
Bush has called a summit with Britain’s Tony Blair and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain for today in the mid-Atlantic Azores Islands before deciding whether to attack Baghdad regardless of support at the world body. Iraq at the same time is pushing to provide more disarmament arguments for the peace camp led by France to stave off conflict. With the destruction of banned Al-Samoud missiles a daily occurrence, Baghdad on Friday sent UN chief arms inspector Hans Blix a report on the VX chemical agents it said it destroyed in 1991.
The government daily Al-Jumhouriya yesterday hailed the worldwide anti-war protest movement as “the fruit of the courageous resistance of Iraq in the face of the embargo and US-British threats to wage a new war. This aggression will be stillborn ... thanks to the unity of the people and its faith in emblematic leader Saddam Hussein who will lead it to victory.”
Meanwhile, at least one US B-1 bomber struck Iraqi radars in western Iraq on Friday, the first time a long-range bomber has been used in a combat mission to enforce the no-fly zones over Iraq, US defense officials said. The use of a heavy bomber for a routine mission normally conducted by fighter jets was another sign that US forces are stepping up the pressure on Baghdad as President George W. Bush heads into a weekend summit in the Azores to discuss Iraq with his British and Spanish counterparts.
The B-1’s targets were “a couple of radars out west,” said a defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was not immediately clear if one or two B-1 bombers were used in the raid. “They’ve never been flown before in Operation Southern Watch,” another defense official said, referring to the 12-year-old mission to enforce a no-fly zone south of the 33rd Parallel.
The US Central Command said “coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons today to target a mobile target acquisition radar and an early warning radar, located approximately 230 miles west of Baghdad.” The strikes occurred between 1400 and 1420 GMT on Friday, the command said in a statement.
“The coalition executed today’s strike after Iraqi forces moved the highly mobile radar system, which is associated with a surface-to-air missile system, below the 33rd parallel into the southern no-fly zone where it was a threat to coalition aircraft supporting Operation Southern Watch,” it said.
It said the radars allow the Iraqis to locate, track and target coalition aircraft. The area where the strikes occurred is near an Iraqi air field south of Ar Rutbah that guards the western approaches to Baghdad and has been the focus of a series of recent air strikes.
--------------------
Romans 9:11-24
Our Eschatology may vary even our Ecclesiology may be disputed among us but our Soteriology most assume a singularity and exclusivity which in biblical term is known as Quote; "The Narrow Way" and Quote!
Posts: 2792 | From: Stockton,Ca | Registered: Jun 2002
| IP: Logged | 
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic
