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Edited on Sat Feb-03-07 01:25 PM by smoogatz
Baghdad truck bomb kills 121 - police Sat Feb 3, 2007 12:06pm ET
By Mussab Al-Khairalla
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A huge truck bomb killed 121 people and wounded 226 in a busy market in a mainly Shi'ite area of central Baghdad on Saturday, in the deadliest single bombing in the capital since the 2003 U.S.-led war.
The blast in Sadriya shattered food stalls and smashed the facades of shops, setting some on fire. Three car bombs ripped through the same market in December, killing 51.
"It was a terrible scene. Many shops and houses were destroyed," said one resident, Jassem, 42, who had rushed from his home nearby to help pull people from the rubble after hearing the ear-splitting explosion.
The casualties swamped the capital's hospitals. There were chaotic scenes at Ibn al-Nafis hospital in central Karrada, where hallways overflowed with wounded on trolleys and relatives and friends screaming for help.
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So, Iraq's population is less than 1/10th of the U.S.'s. Imagine if a truck bomb went off in NYC and killed the equivalent number of people, by population--1200 or so. Now imagine that pretty much every single day, between 300 and 400 Americans were killed an acts of political/religious/ethnic violence--including bombings, shootings, beheadings, and various other gruesome acts of torture and mayhem. Imagine the government was unable or unwilling to stop the carnage. Imagine there were 1.5 million foreign troops in the country, sent there to throw out the previous government and steal our natural resources, and that every family you knew--including your own--had a member who had been killed or imprisoned or threatened or humiliated by the foreign occupiers. Imagine you were unemployed and broke and all the government-funded jobs were either going to fat-cat foreign contractors or slave laborers from third world countries. What would your politics be? Whose side would you be on? What would you do?
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