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Length: 3:07
MILES O'BRIEN: Death and
bloodshed spreading to the oil-rich cities north of
Baghdad. Reports of deaths today in Baquba after a
series of deadly bombings in Kirkuk yesterday.
CNN's Michael Ware joining us from Baghdad with more
-- Michael.
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Miles. What we
saw was a particularly bloody Sunday in the northern
city of Kirkuk. Four what looks like coordinated car
bombings in less than three hours. In fact, we saw
two suicide car bombings and one further car bombing
detonate within this important city in less than 30
minutes. As the smoke cleared, there was 23 dead and
at least 66 wounded. So this was very clearly a
sophisticated and well-organized attack on this very
important oil-rich and heavily contested northern
city -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: And we haven't seen as much violence there,
have we, Michael? What's going on?
WARE: Well, we do see spikes in violence in the
northern Kurdistan region. I mean, Kurdistan is
essentially a state within a state. It's been that
way since the imposition of the no-fly zone during
Saddam's regime, where Saddam's armies were kept away
by U.S. and U.K. jets from the Kurds. Since the fall
of Saddam's regime, the Kurds have maintained
themselves as their own little region.
Nonetheless, they continue to be plagued, not so much
by the Sunni insurgency that we see down here, nor by
the Shia militias and death squads, but by
al-Qaeda-backed groups, principally Ansar al-Sunnah
-- which is renowned for its coordinated car bomb
attacks, just like this one, though no one has yet
taken credit. -- and by Ansar al-Islam, an
al-Qaeda-backed group that President Bush claimed had
been decimated in the invasion, which has since been
well proven to be wrong -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Meanwhile in Baghdad, this notion of
building a trench around the city has a lot of people
scratching their heads, Michael.
WARE: Oh, I mean, this is an absolutely...
fascinating idea that was floated by the extremely
controversial Ministry of Interior, which very
quickly saw the U.S. military distance itself from
this concept. I mean, immediately there's thoughts
conjured up of a moat, more or less, around Baghdad.
Reality, however, is much different.
What they're talking about is trying to control entry
and exits from the capital. I mean, they already do
that to an extent now. They're merely talking about
re-enforcing that, perhaps with some additional
trenches -- although many already exist, and there's
natural canals that they use -- but we're talking
more about barbed wire and berms, and the increasing
of checkpoints in the leadup to what is traditionally
the Ramadan or holy month offensive, which the holy
month due to begin within days. This will be my
fourth Ramadan, and I can tell you that I, like the
U.S. military, is expecting yet another bloodbath --
Miles.
O'BRIEN: Michael Ware in Baghdad, thank you very
much.