December 30, 2013

A massive suicide-bomb explosion ripped through a packed trolleybus in Volgograd, Russia, this morning. The attack came less than 24 hours after a suicide bombing in the city’s main train station left 17 people dead. Today’s blast at the height of the morning rush hour killed 14 people and seriously injured some 20 others. Among the injured are a pregnant woman, two teenagers, and a six-month-old baby whose parents are assumed dead.

The twin attacks raise the specter that militant groups may be ramping up violence to mar the 2014 winter Olympic Games in the resort city of Sochi in February. The Olympics venue is close to Russia’s volatile north Caucasus region. Experts on the domestic situation in Russia have pointed out that it was highly risky to stage the games so near to the troubled republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. A leader of the Islamist insurgency in the two Caucasus republics, Doku Umarov, has called on his supporters to use “maximum force” to disrupt the “satanic” Olympic Games. Islamic separatists have carried many terrorist attacks in their attempt to establish Islamic states in the Caucasus region. Hundreds of people were killed, including many children, in attacks on a Moscow theater in 2002 and a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan in 2004.

In the Soviet Union, winter weather and the determination of the army and the people stopped the German advance at Stalingrad (now Volgograd) during World War II. (AP/Wide World)

The experts also suggest that the terrorists chose Volgograd for a reason. The city, which is about 560 miles (900 kilometers) south of Moscow and 435 miles (700 kilometers) northeast of Sochi, is of huge symbolic importance to most Russians. Volgograd (then the Soviet city of Stalingrad) was the scene of one of the most strategically important battles of  World War II (1939-1945). The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from Aug. 23, 1942, until Feb. 2, 1943, was the first time in the war that an attacking German army, which many believed invincible, was forced to turn back.

Additional World Book articles:

• World War II (1942) (a Back in Time article)
• Europe (1943) (a Back in Time article)
• Russia (1994) (a Back in Time article)
• Russia (2002) (a Back in Time article)
• Russia (2003) (a Back in Time article)
• Russia (2004) (a Back in Time article)

July 22, 2013

Attacks on two large prisons outside Baghdad resulted in the deaths of at least 25 Iraqi security guards this morning. At the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia, broke out as the militants carried out their military-style assault. (Al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia is an Iraqi offshoot of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization. In Iraq, the organization is made up of Sunni insurgents.)

Sectarian violence is once again on the rise in Iraq, especially in and around Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul. (World Book map).

In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a suicide car-bomber targeting Iraqi security forces left another 22 soldiers and 3 passers-by dead today. A separate attack in western Mosul killed 4 policemen.

Experts on the situation in Iraq note that the prison attacks on Taji and Abu Ghraib, which began late on July 21, are the latest indication of the deteriorating state of security in the country. They also suggest that Sunni militants are re-gaining momentum in their insurgency against Nouri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-dominated government. The latest surge of attacks in Iraq has resulted in the deaths of more than 450 Iraqis since the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan on July 10. Sectarian violence in Iraq has not been this bad since 2007 and 2008.

Additional World Book articles:

• Iraq War
• Iraq: a Quest for Political Identity in a Second Year of War (a special report)
• Iraq 2007 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2008 (a Back in Time article)