Middle East news: Ashkenazi terrorist settlers attack and car bombs in Iraq

[Free Truth]

Settlers attack West Bank village

Tensions in and around Bat Ayin have been high since a Palestinian killed a youth with an axe.

At least eight people have been injured in a rampage by Jewish settlers through an Arab village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, residents have said.

The settlers from Bat Ayin, where a Palestinian killed a young settler last week, attacked cars and homes in the village of Safa on Wednesday.

The Israeli account is that the settlers, who were armed, came under attack when they entered Safa to pray, Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the West Bank, said.

The Palestinians were injured when the Israeli troops fired tear gas and live ammunition to break up the disturbance, medics said.

Palestinian medical staff said they could not reach the village as a result of the continuing violence.

Axe attack

Tensions in Bat Ayin and the surrounding Arab villages have been high since Thursday, when an unidentified Palestinian carrying an axe killed a 13-year-old boy.

Another boy, aged seven, was wounded in the attack, after which the Palestinian fled the scene. He has not been caught.

Bat Ayin, which lies near the Palestinian towns of Hebron and Bethlehem, is home to about 1,000 Israeli settlers.

Three people from the settlement were sentenced in 2002 by an Israeli court to prison terms ranging from 12 to 15 years for trying to set off a bomb near a Palestinian girls' school in Arab East Jerusalem.

The seven-year-old boy injured in last Thursday's axe attack is a son of one of the three jailed settlers.

Passover closure

The incident in Safa comes amid a general closure of the West Bank by Israel, in the run up to the Jewish holiday of Passover (Pesach).

Israeli security forces will be on high alert over the holiday period, an Israeli army spokesperson said on Tuesday. The closure will run until April 18.

Palestinians are denied entry from the West Bank during public and religious holidays because Israel considers its Jewish population to be at a high risk of attacks by Palestinian armed groups.

But the closures will also affect the ability of Palestinians who have jobs in Israel to reach their place of work, upsetting their livelihoods.

The annual Passover closure, on top of permanent checkpoint restrictions, is seen by many Palestinians and international observers as collective punishment of the Palestinian population.

Jews in Israel and around the world celebrate Passover in memory of the exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt in ancient times.

Car bomb hits Iraqi Shia district

Pictured: An injured baby boy who survived the attack lost his parents and brother in the bombing.

At least eight people have been killed and 18 others wounded after a car bomb exploded in the Shia district of Kadhimiya in the northwest of Iraq's capital, police say.

The attack on Tuesday comes one day after a string of such attacks that killed 34 people across Baghdad.

Police said the number of casualties was preliminary and could rise.

US and Iraqi officials blamed Monday's series of bombings on al-Qaeda. which has been accused of targeting Shia areas in the past.

The latest attacks underscore the challenges Iraqi security forces face as US combat troops prepare to withdraw by August 31, 2010, with all US troops due to leave by the end of 2011.

Bombings continue on an almost daily basis in Iraq, despite the sharp fall in violence.

The last large bomb blast in Baghdad killed 20 people in a shopping district on March 26.

Preventing all car bombs in the crowded streets of Baghdad - a maze of crumbling buildings and concrete walls housing millions of people - is all but impossible.

Good old Al-Qaeda (Mossad), of course...

They arrested Sunni Arab fighters known as Awakening Councils, or Sahwa...

But Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Smith, a military spokesman, said: "Our assessment is that the attacks today were a co-ordinated effort by Al-Qaeda. There were no indicators that the [Sahwa fighters] ... were involved in any of the attacks."

There were bombings in Baghdad before the arrests and after the arrests.

Six car bombs have exploded across Baghdad, killing at least 34 people and wounding scores more, in what officials say was a co-ordinated attack by al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters.

A blast at a popular market in the Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City in east Baghdad killed at least 10 people and wounded 65 others in Monday's attack.

Another car bomb blew up next to a group of people waiting for work, killing six people and wounding 16 more.

Hours later, south Baghdad's Um al-Maalif neighbourhood was shaken by two blasts in a market, killing 12 and wounding 25 people.

An explosion hit a market area of Hussainiya in Baghdad's northern outskirts, killing four people. A second, in a street in eastern Baghdad, apparently targeting the convoy of an interior ministry official, killed one of his guards and a bystander.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A roadside bomb in the Shi'ite Kadhimiya district in northwest Baghdad killed seven people and wounded 23 on Wednesday, police said, a day after a bomb in the same area killed nine.

Kadhimiya is home to one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines, and officials said the blast bore the hallmarks of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, which deems Iraq's majority Shi'ites heretics and often attacks their mosques and religious festivals.

"What are the targets of these explosions? What do they want? They just target innocent people," said Adnan Raheem, lying in a stretcher at Kadhimiya hospital after being wounded in the blast. Unconscious children lay nearby.

"Children, young people, the elderly -- do these savages ask what they gain from these awful acts?"

Would Muslims set off bombs in busy areas (Esp. Holy) targeting innocent people, children, elderly?  
Who is really committing the awful acts on innocent people should be the question.

"Three people from the settlement (Bat Ayin) were sentenced in 2002 by an Israeli court to prison terms ranging from 12 to 15 years for trying to set off a bomb near a Palestinian girls' school in Arab East Jerusalem."

Al Qaeda and other insurgent groups are still capable of frequent large-scale attacks, despite a sharp drop in violence in Iraq in the past year.

U.S. President Barack Obama hailed the improvement in security during a visit to Baghdad on Tuesday.

He has ordered the U.S. military to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by August 31, 2010, raising questions about how prepared the Iraqi security forces are to handle threats from militant groups by themselves.

A day before Obama's unannounced visit, a series of seven car bombs killed 37 people in the capital.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed those attacks on members of Saddam Hussein's once-powerful Baath party, labeling the blasts their "gift" to mark Tuesday's 62nd anniversary of the party's foundation in Syria.

Thursday is the sixth anniversary of Baghdad's fall to invading U.S. troops, when a giant Saddam statue was pulled down in Firdos Square. Huge crowds are expected to join protests against the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

FALLUJA LOCKED DOWN

The head of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), denied reports from a security source that it might have been behind Monday's bombs.

ISCI is a Shi'ite Islamist party allied to Maliki's Dawa party in parliament, although they have lately become estranged.

"These accusations ... are the price we pay for (our) steadfast position ... against the ... Baath party," Badr leader Hadi al-Amiri told the ISCI-owned Al Furat TV station. "Al Qaeda and the Baath party lie behind the recent bombs."

The current leader of the outlawed Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the most senior of Saddam Hussein's aides still at large, urged Iraqi insurgents to continue their struggle in a statement issued on Tuesday.

"I call upon you ... to be unified to destroy what remains of the invading forces and their agents," he said, an apparent reference to the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

Iraqi police shut the city of Falluja on Wednesday, banning traffic and pedestrians as they hunted what they said was a group of al Qaeda militants carrying out bombings there.

Schools were closed, shops told to be shuttered and a curfew put in place from daybreak after explosions targeting police in the city, in the western desert province of Anbar, once the heartland of Sunni Islamist resistance to the U.S. invaders.

Around 35 people were arrested, a police official said, asking not to be named.