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Over the weekend US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Russia against its action in
Ukraine, saying that it was invading a country on a trumped up pre-text. Coincidentally,
it's also time for our monthly update of the shocking violence that's going on in Iraq,
the last country the US invaded with troops on the ground, on a jumped up pretext.
On the second of February four bombs went off in Baghdad province killing fourteen people.
There were two blasts in the capital itself and two bomb in the town of Mahmudiya.
All of the bombs went off in majority Shia areas.
No group claimed responsibility for any of those attacks but the government has been
targeting Sunni militias in the west of the country, near Syria.
ISIS had seized Fallujah and Ramadi in January and the army was sent in to recapture the
cities.
There was some heavy shelling in Fallujah with but it wasn't just militants being taken
out.
Civilians living in the area reported shells falling on neighbourhoods, where they say
there was absolutely no ISIS presence.
The shelling affected us - planes and artillery are targeting families and innocent people.
We live in Naimiya and there are no ISISor other armed groups, only children.
The green zone in Baghdad is a heavily protected area, where security should be extremely tight
and, therefore, it should be safer. It's where the Prime Minister's office is and where the
Western embassies are located.
But on this day there were four bombs around the green zone, killing 13 people. One car
bomb was detonated outside the Foreign Affairs Ministry, another at a restaurant just one
street away from the green zone.
And all four of the explosions came just one day after two rockets were fired into the
green zone. So there are pretty major questions about Iraq's ability to protect strategic
sites, let alone the people en masse.
With the conflict continuing around Ramadi and Fallujah, there's also a growing humanitarian
problem.
By February the sixth the UN estimated that 140,000 people had fled their homes in Anbar
Province and headed north.
Most of them headed to the city of Samarra, where there's a relief campaign to distribute
food, bedding and clothing.
But it's not just the presence of ISIS in the cities that's causing people to flee,
it's also the artillery shelling and aerial bombardment, which has intensified through
the month of February.
This is the largest internal displacement in Iraq since the height of sectarian violence
in 2006.
The town of Sulaiman Pek in Anbar province was also overrun by ISIS militants, who raised
their black flag over the town.
That led to more shelling by government forces, more attacks with helicopter gunships, more
troops and more heavy weapons being sent in.
There were also more civilians killed, and more of them being forced to flee their homes.
At least 24 people were killed immediately in Baghdad province by overnight bomb blasts
near two Shia mosques and a bus station.
The deadliest attack was a minibus bomb at a bus station, in a Shia district of Ur in
the north of the province.
Nine were killed in two attacks on Shia mosques in the capital and in a separate incident
in Tikrit, gunmen shot dead a police colonel and a barber, who was in his shop.
While the clean up operation from those bombings was being dealt with, at least 49 people were
killed in Baghdad and Hilla.
They included a bomb at an unfinished Ministry of Youth building in Bayaa. And seven car
bombs in and around Hilla. those seven bombs alone killed 35.
The funerals for at least 20 people killed by mortar attacks in Mussayab were held on
this day. The mortars hit a market and a gym and another 35 wounded were wounded.
But the death toll was particularly high because of the timing of the attack - in the evening,
it was designed to hit at a time the market would have been full of shoppers.
Oh, my son Medhawi, let them bury me with you in your grave! Let me bury them instead
of you!
And then in Baghdad's Sadr City on the very last day of the month, more than 30 people
were killed after a motorcycle rigged with explosives was blown up.
The anger and frustration with the government is growing - in areas like this where mass
deaths have occurred, it's directed at them because of the absence of security and the
seeming inability to stem the flow of bloody violence.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blames the upsurge in violence on spillover from the
war in Syria and it's probable that is a contributing factor.
But many of his critics, including some in Ramadi and Fallujah say it's his policies
towards the Sunni minority that are to blame.
Sunnis dominated the political landscape in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and now they feel
they are being marginalised and that's why support for groups like ISIS is growing.
And that's also why last year was one of the bloodiest in Iraq, since the end of the allied
there. This year has been no different, with 930 people were killed in February alone,
taking the total to more than 2,000, just two months in.