Fresh violence kills 20 in Baghdad

AT least 20 Iraqis were killed and more than 200 wounded as fresh violence rocked Baghdad yesterday. The US army launched a fresh offensive on Baghdad’s radical Shi’ite stronghold of Sadr City overnight that killed 13 people.

And a suicide car bomb targeting recruits for the Iraqi national guard ripped through a busy shopping area in central Baghdad, killing seven people.

In northern Iraq, a US soldier was killed in an attack on a patrol in the city of Mosul while another US soldier died in a roadside bomb attack in Tikrit, the hometown of ousted president Saddam Hussein, the US military said.

The US push, during which 13 people were killed and 149 wounded in Sadr City, was described by an official from firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr’s office as the “most devastating” offensive there since Saddam’s fall.

US military officials claimed they had killed up to 25 fighters from Sadr’s Mehdi Army and the raid was aimed at stabilising the area and allowing reconstruction work to begin.

The Baghdad car bomb that ripped through a group of men queuing up to join the Iraqi national guard was the latest in long list of attacks against Iraqi security forces.

An AFP reporter saw people burying body parts on the median strip which cuts the wide boulevard in two. At the scene, scores of sandals and shoes lay in pools of blood on the pavement. Iraqis covered burned flesh lying on the ground with store banners torn down by the explosion.

A nearby ice cream stall was destroyed in the blast.

Dazed survivors were shocked the area was targeted. “They just bombed people eating ice cream,” said Humam Abdul-Hadi, owner of a nearby shop.

Hours later, another car bomb attack apparently aimed at a US military patrol shook the capital’s Mansur neighbourhood. There was no immediate report of casualties.

Meanwhile, US President George W Bush defended his invasion of Iraq at the United Nations General Assembly. He said the United States had enforced “the just demands of the world”.

But United Nations chief Kofi Annan reminded the assembly that Iraqi prisoners had been “disgracefully abused,” in a reference to the Abu Ghraib scandal, and made veiled references to the US in a speech calling on all nations to obey the rule of law.