Iraqi children killed in second major suicide blast in three days

A SUICIDE car bomber, who targeted American soldiers as they gave sweets to children and detonated his vehicle, killed up to 27 other people yesterday.

A dozen children and one soldier were among the dead.

At least 70 others, including three US soldiers, were injured in the attack, the second major suicide bombing in Baghdad this week.

Twenty-five people were killed on Sunday when a suicide attacker struck at an army recruiting centre.

The fireball from yesterday’s blast set a nearby house alight, the US military said.

The attack stunned the impoverished east Baghdad neighbourhood of mostly Shiite Muslims and Christians.

“There were some American troops blocking the highway when a US Humvee came near a gathering of children, and US soldiers began to hand them sweets,” said Karim Shukir, 42.

“Suddenly, a speeding car showed up and struck the Humvee and the children.”

The vehicle used in the attack was a brown Toyota Land Cruiser with a registration from the southern city of Basra, police said.

Between 11 and 13 children were killed. Authorities scrambled to compile an accurate count of the dead and injured.

“The explosion was mainly on the children,” resident Abbas Ali Jassim said.

In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan condemned the bombing, saying it showed that insurgents “have no regard for innocent, human life whether it’s men, women or children”.

“There is simply no excuse or justification for murdering innocent civilians, particularly children,” he said.

In a separate attack yesterday, a roadside bomb exploded near a US patrol in eastern Baghdad, killing a seven-year-old child and seriously wounding a woman, police said.

Last September, 35 Iraqi children were killed when a string of bombs exploded as US troops handed out sweets in west Baghdad.

It was the largest death toll of children in any insurgent attack since the start of the Iraq conflict.

However, many victims’ families blamed the Americans for the tragedy because their presence attracted insurgents.

Following yesterday’s attack, charred remains of an engine lay in the street.

A child’s bicycle was crumpled beside the street, which was splattered with pools of blood.

At Kindi hospital, where many of the dead and injured were taken, one distraught woman sat outside the operating room.

“May God curse the mujahedeen and their leader,” she cried.

Hours after the attack, about 200 people turned out for the funeral of five of the victims.

A US-Iraqi military operation launched in May has reduced suicide bombings in the capital, but authorities acknowledge that it is difficult to eliminate such attacks entirely.

In other violence yesterday, gunmen killed three Iraqi soldiers, including a lieutenant, in two separate attacks in western Baghdad, police said.

Meanwhile, coalition forces captured Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s top lieutenant in Baghdad, Abu Abd al-Aziz, General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said.

An Interior Ministry official acknowledged up to 10 Sunni Arabs suffocated in a police vehicle while in custody and said those responsible will stand trial.

The incident has angered Iraqis as tensions between Sunnis and the Shiite-dominated government rise. Their deaths are among many complaints of abusive treatment by Iraq’s US-trained security force.

The men reportedly suffocated after being held for hours in a vehicle that lacked oxygen, following an attack on an Interior Ministry patrol on Sunday in Baghdad. The temperature at the time was about 45C.

Hussein Kamal, head of intelligence at the ministry, said the men appear “to have died after the vehicle’s engine was turned off, stopping the air conditioning”.

A member of an influential Sunni group said Iraqi security forces stormed houses in Baghdad early yesterday and detained 13 people, including a Sunni cleric, before torturing and killing most of them.

One of the dead was a Shiite Muslim, the rest were Sunnis, said Sheik Hassan Sabri Salman of the Association of Muslim Scholars.