AP Headline: Car, Truck Bombs Kill 27 As Iraq Violence Renews

Wait, I'm confused.

I thought "trends" had be sustained and confirmed over a period of time before becoming newsworthy. And yet I see this headline proclaiming, on the basis of (in the scheme of things) a relatively weak Al Qaeda effort at demonic mass-murder as re-igniting the once and future "trend" of ever-increasing casualties and instability.

A bomb in a parked car struck worshippers heading to a Shiite mosque Sunday in Baghdad, killing at least nine people as Iraqis celebrated a Muslim holiday, while the death toll rose to 18 in a coordinated suicide truck bombing and ambush north of the capital.

Relatives and rescue workers pulled bodies from under piles of concrete bricks and rubble in the Sunni city of Samarra, where a suicide truck bomber detonated his explosives late Saturday. Guards had opened fire before he could reach the targeted police headquarters.

Gunmen drove up and fought with police immediately after the blast, which tore through nearby buildings. At least 18 people were killed and 27 wounded, police said.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks in Baghdad and Samarra, but they bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq militants who had promised an offensive during Ramadan to undermine U.S.-Iraqi claims of success in quelling the violence in the capital with an eight-month-old security operation.M

On the other hand -- buried deep -- is this:

While Baghdad and cities to the north have faced a series of deadly attacks throughout Ramadan, the numbers have been relatively low and dropped significantly with the start of Eid al-Fitr, during which Iraqis visit the graves of relatives and pack into parks to celebrate the end of a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting.

The deaths reported in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, raised the number of people killed or found dead on Saturday from a low of four to 22. That number was 16 on Friday, a dramatic drop from the 50 deaths reported a day earlier.

Note what "trend" gets the headline and lead grafs, though.

posted by Ace at 06:16 PM

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