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Friday, October 01, 2004

Isn’t it interesting to see how ‘news’ is interpreted?

Below I put a NYT article and an Al Jazeera article…both the same event that happened in Baghdad, Iraq yesterday (30 September 2004).

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Dozens Killed in Attack Near U.S. Convoy in Western Baghdad
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/international/middleeast/30CND-IRAQ.html?oref=login&hp)
By TERENCE NEILAN

Published: September 30, 2004

Three car bombs were set off near an American military convoy in western Baghdad today, killing at least 35 people and wounding dozens, hospital officials said.

Ten American soldiers were wounded in the attack, the military said in a statement from Baghdad. Eight were treated and released and two had more serious injuries and were evacuated to a medical facility, the statement said.

Many Iraqi casualties were also reported, according to the statement, which gave no further details.

Officials at the Yarmouk hospital told Reuters that they were inundated with bodies and had taken in at least 42 dead. They said about 140 people were wounded, most of them children hit by shrapnel.

Residents told the news agency that a ceremony to open a new water and sewage plant was taking place when the attack occurred.

Earlier, an American soldier was killed and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded at a checkpoint in western Baghdad, the military said.

Two Iraqi policemen were also reported killed, and 10 Iraqis wounded.

In an early-morning raid on Falluja, a Sunni Muslim stronghold west of the capital, American forces raided what the United States military said was a successful strike on a known safe house used by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. At least four Iraqis were reported dead.
"Significant secondary explosions were observed during the impact indicating a large cache of illegal ordinance was stored in the safe house," a military statement said. Explosions continued in the northeastern side of the city for hours, The A.P. reported.

In the northern city of Talafar, a car bomb aimed at the police chief killed at least 4 people and wounded 16, Iraqi and American officials said, The Associated Press reported. A police officer speaking on condition of anonymity said the police chief, whose name was only given as Colonel Ismail, escaped from the assassination attempt.

Also today, the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera showed footage of what it said was 10 new hostages seized by militants in Iraq. Al-Jazeera said the 10 — 6 Iraqis, 2 Lebanese and 2 Indonesian women — were taken by The Islamic Army in Iraq. The group claimed responsibility for seizing two French journalists last month.

The footage showed three of the hostages, who were not identified, and two masked gunmen pointing weapons at them. There was no mention of demands or where the hostages were abducted.

Al-Jazeera said the 10 were employees of an electricity company.

A Lebanese Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, later told The A.P. that two Lebanese citizens had been seized in Iraq, but it was not immediately clear if they were the same as those shown by Al-Jazeera.

The Frenchmen, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, disappeared Aug. 20 during a trip to Najaf, in southern Iraq. The Islamic Army in Iraq demanded that France revoke a new law banning Islamic head scarves from state schools.
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Many killed in Baghdad blasts
(http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7393F1E3-1108-43E0-8144-6E43CC2E0C0A.htm)
Thursday 30 September 2004, 16:17 Makka Time, 13:17 GMT


Bomb outside Abu Ghraib headquarters injured 60 civilians
At least 41 people were killed, most of them children, and scores more were wounded in four car bombings around Baghdad.

Morgue director Naji Shitshan told journalists at the capital's Yarmuk Hospital on Thursday that 37 children were among the dead, three men and a woman.

The three blasts follow an earlier car bombing that killed one US soldier and two Iraqi policemen and wounded 10 Iraqis and three US soldiers.

The bomb exploded near a checkpoint at a crowded intersection in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad. A doctor at Abu Ghraib hospital, Muhammad Safaa al-Din, said 60 people had been wounded in the blast, including 15 children and 10 women.

US toll increase

Another US soldier was killed in a separate incident when a rocket hit a US logistics base near Baghdad.

The confirmed deaths of the two soldiers raise the US toll in Iraq toat least 1052 since Iraq was invaded in 2003. No accurate figures for Iraqi civilian casualties have been kept, though the toll is believed to be just under 40,000.

Instability is mounting in Iraq just four months before nationwide polls, and a few weeks before the US presidential election in November.

Attacks on US troops have risen to around 80 a day from 40 a month ago.

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