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At least 36 people have died in three large explosions apparently targeting hotels in the heart of Iraq’s capital. More than 70 were injured in the Baghdad blasts, which police said were caused by suicide car bombers.
The first explosion went off near the Sheraton Hotel, and two more followed in quick succession. The attacks came as the Iraqi government announced that Saddam Hussein’s former defense minister Ali Hassan al-Majid – also known as “Chemical Ali” – had been executed. The BBC’s Jim Muir is in Baghdad.
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MARCO WERMAN: Baghdad had been relatively quiet in the past six weeks. Then today, a series of car bombs shattered any sense of calm that residents of the Iraqi capital may have been feeling. The first explosion happened near the Sheraton Hotel. Two further blasts followed shortly afterwards near the Green Zone. At least 36 people were killed and more than 70 people were wounded. The attacks came as Iraq is preparing for General Elections in March. The BBC’s Jim Muir is in Baghdad. Jim, what happened today?
JIM MUIR: Well this was obviously a coordinated triple suicide car bomb attack, or campaign almost, you would call it. The first went off near the Sheraton Hotel which is close to where we are. We had our building shaken, some windows blown out and dust thrown around and so on. That was a suicide car bomb just by the Sheraton. We believe 11 people were killed in that blast. Then a short while afterwards another similar car bomb explosion near the Babylon Hotel which is a mile or two away. And then another one at the Hamara Hotel which is where a lot of western journalists are based. Heavy damage there, both to the hotel and adjacent buildings were a lot of journalists are stationed.
WERMAN: And how unusual is a well coordinated, three well coordinated strikes?
MUIR: Well they do seem to come in clusters. That’s maybe why they take so much planning, because of the logistics involved. The ones in August, October and December, involved double suicide truck bombings, almost simultaneously, but striking at Ministries and getting through the security to get at Ministries obviously took a lot of planning too. So yes, there’s a lot of planning goes into these and obviously there are people out there who still have the logistics and the planning and the capability to carry out these attacks. The government is accusing both remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Bathist Regime and Islamic Radicals are kind of getting together in a cooperative venture for these attacks.
WERMAN: Now, Iraqi’s go to the polls in March to vote for a new Parliament. Iraqi’s are taking the lead role now on security this time around as opposed to international forces. But I guess these bombings make one wonder if the country is secure enough. Do you think the violence could actually derail March elections?
MUIR: I doubt very much if it would because the elections are nation-wide and the violence, as I say, is happening in this kind of concentrated way every two months. I don’t think they have a big enough capability, the insurgents, to mount a kind of huge multiple campaign of a sustained nature that could actually derail the elections. Certainly there will be more attempt as the day approaches. There’s no question about that.
WERMAN: Jim, also today, one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen, Ali Hassan Almajid, better knows as Chemical Ali, was executed. Remind us briefly who he was and how Iraqi’s reacted to reminders of the Saddam era today and news like this of Chemical Ali’s execution.
MUIR: Well Chemical Ali, Ali Hassan Almajid, was the cousin of Saddam Hussein and he was the man that Saddam chose to spearhead his brutal campaigns of repression, both against the Kerds in the North and the Shiites in the South. He lead what’s called the Anfal campaign against the Kerds in 1988, in which an estimated 180,000 Kerds died in what human rights watch and now they have called a genocide. He got his first death sentence for that. There were all together four death sentences. The second and third were for crimes against the Shiites in the South, repressing their uprising there in 1991. And again, another rebellion from the Shiites in 1999. Then finally, of course, just eight days ago he received that fourth death sentence for Halabja, the town where he ordered his forces, the Air Force, to drop chemical bombs on the Kerds there killing something like 5,000 of them. That, for the Kerds, was the big symbolic event which stood out as the kind of symbol of everything that was evil about the Saddam Hussein regime and the traumas it inflicted on them. So they wanted to see him hang for that and that is exactly what’s happened.
WERMAN: The BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad. Greatly appreciate your time Jim.
MUIR: Most welcome Marco.
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