Iraq to Round Up Homeless, Mentally Ill, to Prevent Bombings

Brian England, Global Political Relations, 2/21/08
www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/19/iraq.homeless/index.html

Several bombings in Iraq started as of February first, and Al Qaeda apparently has a new method of bombing. They have recruited people with disabilities, specifically mentally ill women, to be suicide bombers. First a pet market and then an electronics store were blown up by female bombers. The first was done by two women that were mentally handicapped, and the explosives were attached to their bodies and blown up from a remote detenator. It is not known if these women knew what they were doing. The electronics store woman bomber was said to have been warning the people around her as she ran into the building. A third explosion has left many officers dead and others injured as a truck filled with rockets was detenated as officers tried to dismantle the explosives. All together there are around 100 people dead, 18 of which were officers, and many others were left wounded. Al Qaeda had recieved these mentally ill women from two psychiatric hospitals where the staff had assisted, and only one man, an active administrator, has been taken into custody. Now there is a campaign to bring in all beggars, disabled persons, and vagrants to government institutions in an attempt to limit this stradegy of bombings.
It is obvious how horrible this tactic of persuading people to be suicide bombers is. There is also a fear for american troops because of attempts on an airport that they are guarding. These bombings are bad enough that they kill innocent people, including children, but now Al Qaeda is taking no loses for their actions. It is also hard to trace these actions back because the bombers are not related in any way to Al Qaeda. The campaign of retrieving these women and turning them over to the government is said to go onfor a week or so, which will not make much of an impact but it is controversial on what to do. They have to limit the access to these potential recruits for suicide bombings, but at the same time these people that have a hard enough life already are being captured like prisoners because of their misfortunes.