soc.culture.pakistan

Baghdad anniversary clampdown fails to stop violence

By Ahmed Rasheed and Wisam Mohammed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least a dozen people were killed in Baghdad's Shi'ite
slum of Sadr City on Wednesday, despite vehicle bans aimed at preventing
unrest from spreading on the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.




U.S. forces announced two more soldiers' deaths, raising the toll to 13
since an upsurge of fighting began on Sunday.


Rockets or mortars, which U.S. forces say are mainly fired from Sadr City,
hit the Green Zone compound in the city centre, but the U.S. embassy said
there were no reports of injuries.

Vehicle bans were also imposed in Samarra and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's
hometown. In Falluja, where members of Saddam's Sunni Arab minority rose up
twice against U.S. forces in 2004, several hundred protesters marched
calling for American forces to leave.


Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,000 U.S. troops have died in the
five-year war. Two million Iraqis have fled the country and about as many
are displaced within Iraq.

For 10-year-old Ammar Karim, taking advantage of the vehicle ban to play
soccer with other boys in the middle of central Baghdad's normally
traffic-clogged Karrada Street, the anniversary had a simpler meaning: a
chance to play.

"I like this government because we have a lot of curfews. It is the only
time we can go out and play football. I wish we could have curfews all the
time, because otherwise my family keeps me locked in the house."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080409/wl_nm/iraq_dc_42;_ylt=AqogufCpPh6Diqstpha_3lwE1vAI

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