Iraqi PM lashes outBAGHDAD April 19 (UPI) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has condemned the insurgent attacks in Baghdad that claimed nearly 200 lives Wednesday.
Maliki, who called those behind the bombings "soldiers of Satan,"
ordered the arrest of the army commander responsible for security in Sadriya district were about 140 people died in a car bombing in a food market, the BBC reported.
"This monstrous attack ... did not distinguish between the old and young, between men and women," Maliki said. "It targeted the population in a way that reminds us of the massacres and genocide committed by the former dictatorship."
It was the highest death toll since U.S. military initiated operations to return security to the nation's capital.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the bombings were "a horrifying thing," but said insurgents would not stop coalition forces from returning Baghdad to a state of safety. Maliki added that Iraqi forces would take control of security across Iraq by the year's end.
Besides the largest blast at the Baghdad market, another 35 people died in a bombing at a Sadr City checkpoint, a third explosion near a Karrada hospital left at least 11 dead, a fourth involving a minibus killed at least two at al-Shurja and two other attacks left about 11 more dead, the BBC said.
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Well that's certainly one way of improving performance on the job... just arrest all incompetents.
Maybe that's the kind of Democracy needed in the USA?
