Three for hope: three US soldiers killed still hope exists among Shiite pilgrims

3 soldiers from US killed in a fired mortar rounds at a base in Southern Iraq, the area which was hoped to be violence free, though the northern part of the country is still hot.

The official report of the killing of 3 soldiers were delayed by the authority till Friday, we hope that the identity of the three soldiers will be declared as sooner as possible. The base struck by mortar rounds on Thursday, Contingency Operating Base Basra, is about 20 miles outside Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.

Basra Province, which lies at the heart of Iraq’s oil industry, was controlled by British troops until this spring, when they withdrew and turned over their bases to American soldiers.

Apart from the death of three US soldiers, six separate attacks were generated of Friday three car bombs and three improvised explosive devices — killed one Shiite pilgrim and wounded 40 others in Baghdad districts, according to Iraqi security forces.

However,  in the neighborhood of Adhamiya, there was a glimmer of hope as thousands of Shiite pilgrims walked peacefully through what was once a stronghold of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other Sunni extremist groups. The pilgrims were taking part in the annual commemoration of the death of the eighth-century Imam Musa al-Kadhim by visiting the gold-domed shrine in Kadhimiya, the Shiite neighborhood just across the Tigris River.

Source: New York Times