Iraqi gold shops are tempting targets in a country of high unemployment and easy access to guns.<\/p>\n
There have been several similar attacks before but this was a particularly violent one because the robbers used bombs, grenades and automatic weapons to kill 15 people.<\/p>\n
The Iraqi government blames a cash-strapped Al Qaeda in Iraq for the robbery.<\/p>\n
They could be involved but the circumstances of the attack raises more questions than answers.<\/p>\n
The Baiyaa neighborhood in south-west Baghdad is a predominantly shiite area.<\/p>\n
It is also an area sources say is tightly controlled.<\/p>\n
In order to get to the gold shops, the armed gang would have had to get through many security checkpoints coming in and coming out of the area.<\/p>\n
Vehicles don’t usually get waived through any checkpoints in Baghdad.<\/p>\n
It can take between 10 minutes to an hour to get through most checkpoints because the vehicles\u00a0 and people are searched for bombs.<\/p>\n
These robbers traveling in a minibus with their weapons and bombs managed to get in, launch their deadly attack, and get out of the area without any problems.<\/p>\n
They were also masked and wore flak jackets.<\/p>\n
Some people here in Baghdad are already questioning whether the robbers had help or were actually members of the security services. They have been implicated before in similar cases.<\/p>\n
Last year several members of Iraq’s presidential guards, who protect senior officials, broke their way into a bank and stole nearly $5 million.<\/p>\n
They tied up eight of the bank’s security guards and executed them.<\/p>\n
Violent crime is on the rise here. Its become a major concern for the people of Baghdad who are still recovering from years of attacks.<\/p>\n
Many of these armed robbers are indeed former insurgents.<\/p>\n
Whoever is carrying out these robberies are finding easy pickings because the Iraqi security forces are still concentrating on dealing with the terrorists.<\/p>\n
Until the security situation and the economy improves, it seems likely that these armed gangs will be able to operate with impunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iraqi gold shops are tempting targets in a country of high unemployment and easy access to guns. There have been several similar attacks before but this was a particularly violent one because the robbers used bombs, grenades and automatic weapons to kill 15 people. The Iraqi government blames a cash-strapped Al Qaeda in Iraq for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}