Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/suicide-attacks-kill-175-as-iraqi-government-plans-crisis-summit Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript The Iraqi military reported at least 175 dead in multiple suicide attacks Tuesday as members of the Iraqi parliament held preliminary meetings for a crisis summit. A New York Times reporter provides an update on politics and violence in Iraq. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. GWEN IFILL: Damien Cave, welcome. There seem to be two tracks going on today in Iraq, the military and the political, on the safety, violence, and we are hearing of untold numbers of people killed in separate fuel tanker bombings in Mosul. We have heard about suicide bombers in Fallujah, the helicopter crash. We have heard about bodies being found by the side of the road in Baghdad.What is the state of the security situation there today? DAMIEN CAVE, New York Times: Well, today appears to be one of the most violent days and weeks here in Iraq. And American military officials have been predicting for a while now that there would be a spasm of violence in advance of the deadline for report to Congress about the American project here in the surge. So it's possible that this is beginning of what they expected.However, violence here tends to go up and down at various times. It's actually kind of hard to get an idea of whether or not this is something that's coordinated or if it's just simply a really bad day in a country that often has many of those. GWEN IFILL: Operation Lightning Hammer, is there any connection between this new piece of the surge, the 16,000 troops north of Baghdad and violence that we're seeing? DAMIEN CAVE: It's hard to tell. I mean, this operation is around Baquba and Diyala province, an area that they've gone into a couple of months ago to try and clear out insurgents that had taken control of a bunch of neighborhoods there.And what they told me this week was that this was basically an assault on people who had moved simply to the villages outside of Baquba. Is it possible that they moved further north to Mosul and elsewhere, as they've done in the past when American troops have come through? That's definitely a possibility, but there isn't any evidence as of yet to suggest that this is the same people who were in Diyala who have moved to Mosul. It's quite possible that this is simply another cell of terrorists who are attacking people there.Sunnis and Kurds in Mosul have been battling for quite a while now, and this appears to be — it bears all the hallmarks of an attack from Sunni extremists on a small sect of Kurds known as Yazidis in two neighborhoods in Mosul.The death counts at this point appear to be rising, and it's not clear how many there are, but it appears to be quite a deadly attack that seems to be part of at least that city's dynamic and possibly something broader than that.