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October 31, 2004
Shi'ite Migrant Workers Hotel Bombed in Tikrit
This incident is an example of the kind of anti-Shi'a undercurrent that goes unnoticed here: somebody in Tikrit launched a rocket against a hotel housing poor Shi'ite migrant workers, killing 15.
At least one rocket hit a hotel used by migrant workers in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit on Sunday, killing 15 Iraqis and wounding about eight, witnesses said. U.S. forces surrounded the hotel, which is around 800 meters away from an American base in the city. The bodies pulled from the rubble were apparently those of Shi'ite workers from the south who came to make a living in the mostly Sunni Muslim region, a cameraman working for Reuters Television said. ... Tikrit, 110 miles north of Baghdad, became a provincial capital during Saddam's rule. Many poor Kurds and Shi'ites still go to work there.
Now, "hotels" housing migrant workers are usually not what Westerners think of when they hear the word hotel. More often than not, they are crowded squalors. Whoever took aim there meant to kill. Over here, this kind of news item disappears as one more bombing or other in Iraq. I really doubt that anyone in Iraq misses the fact that it was religious targeting.
Posted by zeynep at October 31, 2004 06:46 PM
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