Massacre in Iraq

While the world's attention is focused on Israel, Lebanon and the Gaza strip, the war in Iraq has claimed many more casualties and the chaos is all consuming. Shia politicians have walked out in protest following the massacre of up to 60 civilians (the actual number has yet to be determined) who were rounded up in a public market and shot by gunmen. The Defence Ministry insists the deaths were the result of car bombs.

That statement was contradicted by the survivors. “About six cars with at least 20 masked gunmen blocked the market road from two sides, got out of the car and opened fire randomly on women, children and elderly people in the market,” Muzzaffar Jassem, who was evacuated to a hospital in Baghdad, said. “The gunmen controlled the market for more than 15 minutes before they left.”
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Officials were unable or unwilling to identify the attackers, two of whom had a sack of grenades when they were captured in a nearby house. But Muayyad Fadhil, the Shia mayor, said that the killers had emerged from a mainly Shia suburb.

Police said that most of the victims were Shia. Sunni MPs said that the attack could have been revenge for the kidnapping and murder of seven Sunnis whose bodies were found the day before in Mahmudiyah. As Shia politicians walked out in protest the Sunnis blamed the Shia bloc that dominates parliament for failing to secure the country.

Will the US media finally admit now that a civil war is underway?

The massacre in Mahmudiyah came hours after a suicide bombing in the north that killed 28 people in a café. In Baqouba, north of Baghdad, four policemen were shot dead when gunmen stormed a hospital and freed 13 wounded detainees.

Reuters also reports on the deaths of 59 Iraqis by a car bomb on Tuesday morning in Kufa and Japan has now withdrawn all of its troops from the country.

"We carried out our humanitarian and reconstruction tasks without firing a single shot — in fact, without pointing a gun at anyone," Koizumi said.

Three more American soldiers were also killed. The total of US soldiers who have perished in Iraq is now 2,554.

Here is the list of other coalition troops who have died as well:

The British military has reported 114 deaths; Italy, 32; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, four; Slovakia, three; El Salvador, Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Romania, one death each.

No one knows exactly how many Iraqis have died but the number is in the tens of thousands, with no end in sight.