AM: "...the official end
of the American-led war in Iraq"
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Length: 2:10
LARGE (25.2 MB)
-----
SMALL (2.7 MB)
Michael spoke briefly with John Roberts this
morning about the current attempt to reignite the
sectarian violence again.
JOHN
ROBERTS: In five days' time, U.S. troops are
scheduled to pull back from Iraq cities, turning
security over to Iraqi forces. But militants in Iraq
are doing their best to interrupt that schedule.
Officials say a huge blast in a crowded Baghdad
market killed at least 64 people yesterday. And the
death toll this week has topped 160. Our Michael Ware
is back in Baghdad. He is live with us this morning.
Michael, the militants certainly trying to put an
exclamation point on this idea of U.S. troops pulling
out of the cities.
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, it's
actually a continuation of a long-running campaign,
certainly the levels of violence here in Baghdad are
not what they were a year or indeed two horrific
years ago, if we all remember the rivers of blood
that were flowing during the sectarian civil war.
The point of this campaign, this bombing campaign,
primarily targeting the Shia population of Iraq is to
reignite that civil war and indeed, we saw the most
spectacular incident of recent days was, as you
highlighted, last night. A motor bike pulling a
vegetable cart ladened with explosives, detonated at
an open-air market in the Shia suburb, Shia
neighborhood of Sadr City at 7:00 p.m. the peak
shopping period, killing 64, wounding about 150 --
many of them women and children who were out
shopping.
Now, this continues today unfortunately. We have
another six people killed in the last 18 hours or so,
including a couple of incidents where a bomb was
detonated at a market and a bus station earlier this
morning, which killed - let's see, killed two people
and then we had another bomb in the same bus station
about half an hour ago, which has killed more people.
So, what we're looking at over the past six days,
John -- six days -- is about 190 Iraqi civilians have
been slaughtered. All as we're about to see the
countdown to the official end of the American-led war
in Iraq come to its conclusion on Tuesday. John.
ROBERTS: Just five days away now. Michael Ware for us
back in Baghdad this morning. Michael, thanks so much
for that report.
46 minutes now after the hour.