Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2004 (16. évfolyam, 5-50. szám)
2004-12-24 / 50. szám
60 Killed, 120 Wounded in Iraq Car Blasts NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - Car bombs tore through a Najaf funeral procession and Karbala’s main bus station Sunday, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than 120 in the two Shiite holy cities. In Baghdad, gunmen launched a bold ambush, executing three election officials, in their campaign to disrupt next month’s parliamentary ballot. The deadly strikes highlighted the apparent ability of the insurgents to launch attacks almost at will, despite confident assessments by U.S. military commanders that they had regained the initiative after last month’s campaign against militants in Fallujah. In the Baghdad attack, dozens of guerrillas — unmasked and apparently unafraid to show their faces — ran rampant over Haifa Street, a main downtown thoroughfare. They dragged the three election workers from a car, lay them on the street in the middle of morning traffic and shot them point-blank. The bombings in Najaf and Karbala, which Shiite officials suspected were coordinated, were the deadliest attacks since July. They were a bloody reminder that the Shiite heartland in the south — not just-the Sunni regions of central and northern Iraq — is vulnerable to the mainly Sunni insurgents aiming to wreck the vote. Shiites, who make up around 60 percent of Iraq’s population, have been strong supporters of the election, which they expect will reverse the longtime domination of Iraq by the Sunni Arab minority. The insurgency is believed to include many Sunnis who have lost prestige and privilege since Saddam Hussein (news - web sitesj’s fall. The persistent insurgent violence has already raised questions over whether residents of central and northern Iraq will be able to vote. If attacks scare away voters in the south as well, it would further undermine the first national ballot since Saddam was ousted. In a message passed on by lawyers who visited him in his cell last week, Saddam denounced the elections as an American plot. “President Saddam recommended to the Iraqi people to be careful of this election, which will lead to dividing the Iraqi people and their land,” Ziad al- Khasawneh, who heads Saddam’s legal team, said in Jordan. An Iraqi member of the team met Saddam in detention on Thursday. Saddam said the elections “aimed at splitting Iraq into sectarian and religious divisions and weakening the (Arab) nation,” said Bushra Khalil, another member of the defense team. The bombings in Najaf and Karbala, predominantly Shiite cities 45 miles from each other south of Baghdad, came just over an hour apart. The first was a suicide blast that ripped through minibuses parked at the entrance to Karbala’s main bus station, followed by a car bomb in a central Najaf square crowded with people watching a funeral procession attended by the city police chief and provincial governor. The Najaf car bomb detonated in central Maidan Square where a large crowd of people had gathered for the funeral procession of a tribal sheik — about 100 yards from where Gov. Adnan al-Zurufi and police chief Ghalib al-Jazaari were standing. They were unhurt. Hospital officials said 47 people were killed and at least 90 others wounded in the blast, which went off about 400 yards from the Imam Ali Shrine, the holiest Shiite site in Iraq “A car bomb exploded near us,” al-Zurufi said. “I saw about 10 people killed.” Al-Jazaari believed he and al-Zurufi were the targets of the attack. The blast sheered facades off nearby buildings and brought down part of a two-floor building. Dozens of local men clambered over the rubble, digging for survivors. The Karbala blast destroyed about 10 passenger minibuses and set ablaze five cars outside the crowded Bab Baghdad bus station. Hospital officials said 13 people were killed and 33 injured. It was Karbala’s second bombing in a week. On Wednesday, a bomb exploded at the city’s golddomed Imam Hussein Shrine, killing eight people and wounding 40 in an apparent attempt to kill a top aide to Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Also Sunday, insurgents detonated two roadside bombs and a car bomb targeting U.S. forces in the volatile city of Mosul 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, in three separate attacks during a two-hour period. Three soldiers were wounded in one roadside bomb blast, while there were no casualties from the others, according to military spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Hastings. An official with the leading Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, said the bombings in Karbala and Najaf Sunday were “no doubt” linked. “These operations aim at driving the Shiites away from the political process and toward acts of revenge to undermine the national unity,” Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer said. “The whole issue has to do with elections.” Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Said al-Hakim, one of Najaf s top four Shiite clerics along with al- Sistani, denounced the bombings, saying they aimed to “create a disturbance in security and incite sectarian sedition” and that God will “avenge and compensate” the victims. The Baghdad ambush was the latest attack to target Iraqi officials working to organize the elections. During morning rush hour, about 30 armed insurgents, hurling hand grenades and firing guns, swarmed onto Haifa Street, the scene of repeated clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents. They stopped a car carrying five employees of the Iraqi Electoral Commission and dragged out three of them. The other two escaped. Pistol-wielding guerrillas forced the officials to kneel in the middle of Haifa Street, while cars behind them braked to a halt, with some panicked drivers trying to reverse away. One of the officials was punched by the gunmen as he lay on the ground, while another knelt nearby, before the militants shot all three at pointblank range. The gunmen then set fire to the officials’ car. The commission condemned the attack as a “terrorist ambush.” A police official said the ferocity of the clashes prevented police from nearing the area. The attackers, most of whom wore no masks or scarves over their faces, set fire to at least one other vehicle before melting away as U.S. and Iraqi National Guard forces cordoned off the area. Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi, who is running -in the Jan. 30 elections, said the Haifa Street violence proved there should be a “short postponement” of the national polls to address the concerns of senior Sunni clerics demanding a boycott. Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a pro-American secular Shiite, said an increase in attacks ahead of the elections had been anticipated. “For sure we expect strikes and we hope the eyes of our people will be open to inform authorities and help them in doing their job,” told Al-Iraqiya TV. Meanwhile, masked insurgents claiming to represent three Iraqi militant groups released a videotape showing what they said were 10 abducted Iraqis who had been working for an American security and reconstruction company. The militants said they represent the Mujahedeen Army, the Black Banner Brigade and the Mutassim Bellah Brigade, all previously unknown groups. Nine blindfolded hostages were seen lined up against a stone wall and a 10th was lying in a bed, apparently wounded. The kidnappers said they would kill the hostages if the Washington-based company, Sandi Group, does not leave Iraq. ENGLISH PAGE December 24,2004 © Time Selects Bush As Person of the Year NEW YORK (AP) - After winning re-election and “reshaping the rules of politics to fit his 10-gallon-hat leadership style,” President George Bush for the second time was chosen as Time magazine’s Person of the Year. The magazine’s editors tapped Bush “for sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes — and ours — on his faith in the power of leadership.” Time’s 2004 Person of the Year package, on newsstands Monday, includes an Oval Office interview with Bush, an interview with his father, former President George H. W. Bush, and a profile of Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove. In an interview with the magazine, Bush attributed his victory over Democratic candidate John Kerry to his foreign policy and the wars he began in Afghanistan and Iraq “The election was about the use of American influence,” Bush said. After a grueling campaign, Bush remains a polarizing figure in America and around the world, and that’s part of the reason the magazine selected him, said Managing Editor Jim Kelly. “Many, many Americans deeply wish he had not won,” Kelly said in a telephone interview. “And yet he did.” In the Time article, Bush said he relishes that some people dislike him. ' “I think the natural instinct for most people in the political world is that they want people to like them,” Bush said. “On the other hand, I think sometimes I take kind of a delight in who the critics are.” Bush joins six other presidents who have twice been named the magazine’s Person of the Year: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower (first as a general), Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton Franklin Roosevelt holds the record with three nods from the editors. Kelly said Bush has changed dramatically since he was named Person of the Year in 2000 after the Supreme Court awarded him the presidency. “He is not the same man,” Kelly said. “He’s a much more resolute man. He is personally as charming as ever but I think the kind of face he’s shown to the American public is one of much, much greater determination.” The magazine gives the title to the person who had the greatest impact, good or bad, over the year. Asked on ABC’s “This Week” how Bush reacted when he learned of Time’s decision, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said the president was “not worried about what pundits might be saying.” Card praised Bush as a “great liberator” for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq and lauded Bush’s tax cuts, education and Medicare reform packages and plans to remake Social Security “So I think he’s got the right ingredients to be recognized as the Person of the Year,” Card said. Kelly said other candidates included Michael Moore and Mel Gibson, “because in different ways their movies tapped in to deep cultural streams,” and political strategist Rove, who is widely credited with engineering Bush’s win. Kelly said choosing Rove alone would have taken away from the credit he said Bush deserves. This is the first time an individual has been named since 2001, when then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was celebrated for his response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The magazine featured the American soldier last year; in 2002, it tapped Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who wrote a critical memo on FBI intelligence failures, and Cynthia Cooper and Sherron Watkins, who blew the whistle on scandals at Enron and WorldCom. DUNA Travel 8530 Holloway Dr. #102 W. Hollywood, CA 90069 SPECIÁLIS ÁR LAX-BUD-LAX $395 +TX. Információért hívják ZSUZSÁT TEL: (310) 652-5294 FAX: (310) 652-5287 1-888-532-0168 AMERIKAI Magyar Hírlap
