McClatchy: Residents say snipers are firing at random on Haifa Street

[Pirate Smile]

Residents say snipers are firing at random on Haifa Street

By NANCY A. YOUSSEF and ZAINEB OBEID
McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The two top U.S. officials in Iraq voiced confidence Monday that Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led government would show no favoritism in its efforts to secure the city, even as residents of a Sunni Muslim neighborhood complained that Shiite Iraqi security forces and government-backed militias were preventing them from evacuating wounded and going for food.



Eight days after a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive began to take control of the Haifa Street area in central Baghdad, residents said they had no water and no electricity and that people seeking food had been shot at random. They said they could see American soldiers nearby, but that the Americans were making no effort to intervene.

"The Americans are doing nothing, as if they are backing the militias," said one resident, who asked to be identified only as Abu Sady, 36, for security reasons. "This military siege is killing us. ... If this plan continues for one more week, I don't think you will find one family left on Haifa Street."

U.S. officials downplayed the reports. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Army Gen. George Casey told a news conference Monday that Iraqi officials had assured them that they'd target both Shiite and Sunni extremists in their efforts to pacify the city.
"I am encouraged by what I have seen. We need to give them the benefit of the doubt and let's see what happens," Khalilzad said. If sectarian problems arise, "that will be a conversation down the road. I hope it will be unnecessary. At this point, what we are focused on is to help implement the plan based on the premises we agreed on."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16467018.htm

[Barrett808]

1. The Fallujah solution in Sunni Baghdad

This will be fun.

[rodeodance]

2. i think the americans are on orders to have no causalities after

the horrible hight rate in december. so they just stand back.

[magellan]

3. Bingo

Meanwhile the Sunnis in Baghdad are sitting ducks. Starve or risk being shot for leaving your house. Dimson has given Iraqi ethnic cleansing his stamp of approval.

[nealmhughes]

4. The people on Haifa Street have only left their safe rooms to come out to bring the dead out of the

street and loudspeakers announced a couple of days ago for men not to come out or they would be shot on site...and for the women and children to stay underground if they could.

I heard it on a radio interview either yesterday or this morning.

It seems that Haifa St. is a mixed Sunni/Shiite area and...