Bombs Rock Baghdad As “Chemical Ali” Hanged

Suicide blasts outside hotels popular with Westerners killed dozens of people in Baghdad Monday, according to Iraqi officials. The explosions hit just before the announcement came that Saddam Hussein’s cousin was hanged. Ali Hassan al-Majid, the cousin of Saddam Hussein and regime enforcer who cast almost as fearsome a shadow across Iraq as the former dictator, was executed by hanging on Monday

Mr. Majid, who served as Hussein’s internal security chief, came to be known as “Chemical Ali” after he ordered the use of poison gas in a ferocious counterinsurgency campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s.

Reuters is reporting that…The series of explosions hit the center of the capital in mid-afternoon.  Iraqi officials said car bombs were detonated outside the Babylon, Ishtar Sheraton, and al-Hamra hotels.  The buildings house foreign aid and news organizations and are frequented by government officials.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

If any one can find a link to a clip of the hanging….send it to me!

So long Mr Chemical Ali!!!

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Sources-

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/25/chemical.ali.executed/

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0125/Seven-years-after-the-fall-of-Baghdad-Chemical-Ali-is-executed

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60O31520100125