In Iraq, after four years and three months of war, the echoes have begun to echo themselves.

More than a dozen gunmen attacked two police bases in Mogadishu early Wednesday with rocket-propelled grenades, sparking firefights that killed at least two people, witnesses and police said.

The images are shocking even by Iraqi standards: Two dozen skeletal children, some tied to beds, others writhing in their own waste and some appearing, at first glance, to be dead.