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De International Herald Tribune bericht: 'Baghdad oasis 'falling to terrorists'
BAGHDAD Mansour is Baghdad's well-to-do oasis. It has fancy pastry shops, jewelry stores, a designer furniture boutique and an elite social club. But it is no longer the address everyone wants.

In the past two months, insurgents have gunned down a city councilman, kidnapped four Russian Embassy workers, shot and killed a tailor in his shop and bombed a pastry shop.

"It's falling to the terrorists," said Hasaneen Mualla, director of the Hunting Club, a social club in the affluent area that lies just five kilometers, or three miles, from the Green Zone. "They are coming nearer to us now. No one is stopping them."

For most of the past six months, Iraq has drifted without a government and its security forces have largely stood by and watched at most crucial moments, like the one in February, when Shiite militias killed Sunnis after the bombing of a sacred shrine.

Now, as Iraqi leaders in the Green Zone savor their recent successes - the naming of the first permanent government since the fall of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted guerrilla leader - Iraqis outside its walls are more frightened than ever.

Neighborhood after neighborhood in western Baghdad has fallen to insurgents, with some areas bordering on anarchy: Bodies lie on the streets for hours. Trash is no longer collected. Children are schooled at home.

The paralysis that shut down life in west Baghdad is creeping ever closer to the heart of the city, and Iraqis in still livable areas are frantic for the government to halt its advance, something it pledged to do when it unveiled a new security plan for Baghdad last week.

"It's like a cancer, spreading from area to area," said a guard at Delta Communications, a Mansour cellphone shop that is now shuttered after a bomb blast last month.' Lees verder:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/23/news/mansour.php