Saturday, April 01, 2006

Just Another Sign Of Civil War

The various Iraqi groups have backed away from trying to kill US troops, and are killing each other.

U.S. military deaths in Iraq hit a two-year low in March, even as religious and ethnic violence between Iraqi factions skyrocketed.

{snip}

“What you have is the insurgents are trying to block the formation of a coalition government and trying to cause a civil war,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who is now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “That means that a lot of these attacks now focus on Iraqi civilians.”

U.S. fatalities in Iraq reached a 12-month high last October, when 96 service members died.

Statistics released by the American-led coalition show that the number of Iraqis killed in violence has risen sharply since the Feb. 22 insurgent bombing of the Askariya mosque, an important Shiite shrine in Samarra.

More than 1,300 Iraqis have died in retaliatory killings between Sunni and Shiite groups since the mosque bombing. Nearly 1,000 were in Baghdad.


But, I quess this is good news from Iraq.


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