Reply #11: Is this bad enough for you? [View All]

Or are you thinking of something worse?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/international/middleeast/20iraq.html?hp&ex=1103605200&en=be7652a7b39b2dc8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

At Least 64 Dead as Rebels Strike in 3 Iraqi Cities
By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: December 20, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 19 - Only days into Iraq's six-week election campaign, car bombers struck crowds in Najaf and Karbala on Sunday, killing at least 61 people and wounding about 120 in those two holy Shiite cities. In the heart of Baghdad, about 30 insurgents hurling grenades and firing machine guns pulled three election officials from their car in the midst of morning traffic and killed them with shots to the head.

Taken together, the attacks represented the second-worst daily civilian death toll from insurgent mayhem in Iraq since the American military occupation transferred formal sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government nearly six months ago.

The worst attack was on July 28, when as many as 70 people were killed by a suicide bomber near a police recruiting center in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.

The attacks raised the specter of exactly the kind of violence that American and Iraqi officials have been hoping to minimize ahead of assembly elections on Jan. 30 that are a watershed in the American-inspired blueprint for democracy in Iraq.