Tuesday 21 October 2014

'Wrong Kind of Islam' Gets at Least 43 Shi'ites Killed in Iraq.

"And kill them wherever you find & catch them. Drive them out from where they have turned you out; for Fitna is worse than slaughter." So Allah rants at his drooling devotees, in his semiliterate codex of codswallop, the Koran, in verse 2:191. The word 'fitna' means 'corruption' or 'mischief' & covers a lot of bases: heresy, civil war, apostasy & anything deemed non-Islamic by any Muslim prepared to perpetrate slaughter.

It was the Second Fitna, ending in 692, that permanently sundered the Sunni & Shi'ite communities & commenced unending slaughter for the subsequent 95% of Islam's sanguinary existence. Each group regards the other as heretical &, as such, worthy of slaughter. After all, Allah himself informs both sides that slaughter is the lesser of two evils when it comes to fitna. The latest episode of this soap opera of blood occurred in two cities of Iraq, as reported by The Daily Star today (hat-tip to Mr Normal ن @PaulWilko657):

Bombings in Iraq kill at least 43

Iraq's top Shiite cleric gave his support Monday to the new government battling the jihadist group ISIS, as militants unleashed a wave of deadly attacks on the country's majority Shiite community, killing at least 43 people.

The blitz by the militants this summer plunged Iraq into its worst crisis since U.S. troops left at the end of 2011.

While there was no claim of responsibility for Monday's attacks, they seemed likely calculated by the group to sow fear among Iraqis and keep pressure on the new Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who took office last month, met with top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the city of Najaf. He said after their talks that Sistani had welcomed the recent formation of the government that Abadi now leads.

al-Abadi
al-Sistani
"We have a long and hard mission ahead of us," Abadi told reporters, after emerging from the meeting with the cleric, who is believed to be 86 years old. "One of the missions is related to security. We need arms and we need to reconstruct our security forces."

Sistani rarely appears in public.

Abadi was scheduled to travel to Tehran for discussions with Iranian officials about the struggle against ISIS, Iraqi media reports said.

The day's attacks killed dozens of people in Baghdad and the in Shiite holy city of Karbala.

In the capital, the bomber blew himself up among Shiite worshippers as they were leaving a mosque in a central commercial area after midday prayers Monday. That blast killed at least 17 people and wounded 28, a police officer said.

In Karbala, four separate car bombs went off simultaneously, killing at least 26 people and wounding 55, another police officer said. The city, about 90 kilometers south of Baghdad, is home to the tombs of two revered Shiite imams and the site of year-round pilgrimages. The explosives-laden cars were parked in commercial areas and parking lots near government offices, the officer added.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to talk to the media.

The attacks in Baghdad and Karbala, the latest in relentless assaults that have challenged the Shiite-led government, came a day after a suicide bombing targeted another Shiite mosque in the Iraqi capital, killing 28 people.

The latest attacks bore the hallmarks of ISIS.

Meanwhile, ISIS militants advanced on the Iraqi town of Qara Tappa disguised as Kurdish peshmerga fighters, Kurdish security sources said.

They seized two Kurdish villages after surprising the Kurdish fighters, then they launched the attack on Qara Tappa, 120 km north of Baghdad, seeking to expand their territory and heap pressure on Kurdish forces in disputed areas.

"The terrorists were wearing peshmerga uniforms and this tactic helped them to easily infiltrate our defenses near Qara Tappa," a peshmerga officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Reinforcements were sent from the Kurdish-controlled city of Khanaqin to repel the insurgents and prevent the town of Qara Tappa from falling, the sources said.

Qara Tappa is a mixed area of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen that came under Kurdish control when Iraqi Kurds took advantage of the fall of much of northern Iraq's Sunni territories to ISIS fighters in June to expand their own boundaries.

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