Media silent on US air strikes in sealed-off Sadr City

Xinhuanet filed this on its Arabic-language website Wednesday evening (April 2), along with reports of other Baghdad violence:

Sources said a fire broke out in a residential apartment building in Sadr City, eastern Baghdad, the result of an American bombing. The extent of damage is unknown, given the fact that Iraqi police barred entry to the aforementioned region, which has been under curfew for a number of days.

The Xinhua person apparently tried to get to the site, and reports that everyone was barred by Iraqi police. Compare McClatchy's one sentence (in its dispatch to its Washington office): "At dawn, the American planes bombed some targets in Sadr City, police said." And the "Multinational Force Iraq" website: Zero Other corporate media: Zero [But see also the comment by Robert Knight who notes he reported this on an investigative news show you can find out about at flashpoints.net].

Putting the reports and non-reports together: Sadr City targets, in the plural, were bombed by the Americans; Xinhua heard about one of these because of the fire; tried to get to the site and reports that everyone was barred. Naturally, US bombings of a residential area that is in effect quarantined are a major story, right? Not at all, not a word, not a whisper, in the US media.

It has been widely reported that the US authorities think at least some of the rocket/mortar attacks on the Green Zone have been coming from the vicinity of the Green Zone. Could yesterday's bombings in Sadr City have anything to do with that other big story about increasing accuracy in rocket and mortar attacks on the Green Zone, thought to be coming from Sadr City?

(People unavoidably think in terms of images and already-experienced patters. Would it not be a good idea for those thinking of the Green Zone attacks as leading to a helicopters-on-the-roof experience, to think instead about the Israel-Fatah-Hamas pattern in this GreenZone-Maliki-Sadr situation, resistance leading to quarantines, media blackouts, and the other accoutrements of collective punishment?)