Huge bombing in Mosul Targets Governor; Awakening meeting 50 Miles from Baghdad Hit

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Big bombs in Mosul and in Karma, al-Anbar.

Questions are being raised about whether the Iraqi army can hold Mosul.

DPA reports that two major bombings in Sunni Arab areas of Iraq on Thursday killed over 40 persons and left over 70 wounded.

In al-Anbar province at Karma 50 km west of Baghdad, a meeting of the local Awakening Council was blown up by a suicide bomber, killing clan chieftains and wounding some US troops. The bombing caused the handover of security from the US to the Iraqi army in al-Anbar to be delayed.

In Mosul, a major city of 1.7 mn. some 225 miles north of Baghdad, guerrillas attempted to assassinate the governor of Ninevah province, Duraid Kashmula with a car bomb. They killed 17 persons, including bodyguards of the governor, and wounded 62. Kashmula escaped unscathed.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement against the US and the Iraqi government has regrouped and reorganized, and is effectively lashing out again. Al-Hayat calls the guerrillas ‘al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,’ but we don’t in fact know who exactly carried out the massive bombings of Thursday and the days before that. In Mosul, it could be remnants of the Baath Party or Sunni Arab nationalists who are ex-Baathists.

The bombing in Karma was carried out by a man dressed in a police uniform, and it killed more than 20 persons. Among them were the head of the Karma tribal council. Three policemen were killed. About 20 persons were wounded.

More on the goings-on in Iraq on Thursday:

Antiwar.com says that over 70 were killed and over 117 were wounded.

At Informed Comment: Global Affairs, see Howard Eissenstat’s essay on the building crisis between secularists and political Islam lite in Turkey.

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