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Length: 3:21
STEPHEN FRAZIER: One
after the other, these powerful car bombs exploded in
the Shia district of Sadr City, ripping through
crowded markets and squares. And half an hour later,
at least 144 Iraqis had lost their lives, hundreds
more wounded in these attacks.
And now authorities are imposing a curfew. It is just
now beginning.
Let's bring in Michael Ware in Baghdad for a sense of
what's happening there now -- Michael.
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Stephen. As I
stand here now, the capital, Baghdad, is under
indefinite curfew, a measure to curb what might be a
vicious blowback to a terrible strike on Iraq's Shia
population.
As American families back in the United States sit
down in the celebration of Thanksgiving, so many
Iraqi families have now been torn apart this
afternoon. This is the single worst event in terms of
the loss of civilian life here in Iraq since the war
began.
At least 144 are now declared dead from this series
of car bombings in the space of 30 minutes in what is
clearly a coordinated strike against the Shia.
Hundreds more are wounded, many of them critically.
All expectations are that the death toll will rise.
The scenes in Iraqi hospitals are simply appalling.
There's a call for doctors who are now coming in from
other parts of the city.
Mosques in the Sadr City Shia ghetto are calling for
blood donors. We're seeing in the corridors of these
hospitals bloodied people laying on the floor --
children, men, it's indiscernible who is alive and
who is dead.
Perhaps in retaliation, we then saw a series of
mortars rain down on neighboring Sunni suburbs. So
what we're seeing is one neighborhood striking
another in what the American military still insists
is not civil war -- Stephen.
FRAZIER: All right. These are attacks that go
neighborhood to neighborhood. But we're getting word,
too, Michael -- could you fill us in what you know
about an attack on a ministry -- the Health Ministry?
WARE: Well, almost at the same time as these
coordinated car bombings, we have three confirmed,
other reports unconfirmed of possibly three more,
that could be six car bombings.
So while this was being unleashed, there was an
assault here in the heart of the capital under
American and Iraqi army control on the Ministry of
Health building. As many as 30 gunmen laid assault
with small arms fire and mortar attack.
The significance being that this is a ministry
controlled by the same Shia political and militia
faction that comes from Sadr City. So while we see an
attack on their government face, one of their key
ministries that is now handling the dead and the
wounded, we also saw a direct strike on their
population on a scale that's not been seen here since
the American invasion and occupation began in 2003.
FRAZIER: All right. Michael Ware, live from Baghdad.
Michael, thank you.