Suicide bombers kill 74 at mosque

SUICIDE bombers killed 74 worshippers at two mosques in eastern Iraq yesterday while in Baghdad two car bombs targeted a hotel housing foreign journalists and killed eight Iraqis.

The suicide attackers targeted the Sheik Murad mosque and the Khanaqin Grand Mosque - both homes to Shi’ite Muslims - in Khanaqin, 87 miles northeast of Baghdad, as dozens of people were attending prayers, police said. The police command said another 75 were injured in the largely Kurdish town.

At sunset, dozens of people were still digging through the rubble of the three-storey Grand Khanaqin Mosque.

The suicide attacker walked into the mosque and detonated himself in the middle of a group of people, said Ali Abdullah. He added that the suicide attacker’s “flesh could be seen on the walls of the mosque”.

Omar Saleh, 73, said from his bed at Kalar hospital that he was bowing in prayer when the bomb exploded.

Soldiers from the US 101st Airborne Division assisted Iraqi security forces in Khanaqin sending medical specialists and supplies.

Hafez Abdul-Aziz, an official with the Iraqi Islamic Party in Diyala, condemned “the cowardly terrorists’ act” and said that his party members, most of whom are Sunni, are ready to donate blood for the victims.

The blast near the Hamra hotel in Baghdad knocked down the blast walls protecting the hotel and blew out windows, but did no structural damage. Several homes near the blast were destroyed.

NBC correspondent Mike Boettcher said that the blast walls saved the lives of the reporters inside the hotel.

“What we have here appears to be two suicide car bombs (that) attempted to breach the security wall in the vicinity of the hotel complex and I think the target was the Hamra Hotel,” US Brigadier General Karl Horst told reporters.

Including yesterday’s incidents at the mosques in Khanaqin and near the Hamra hotel in Baghdad, suicide bombings in Iraq have killed at least 1,617 Iraqis and wounded at least 3,429 since April 28, 2005.

Meanwhile, an audiotape purportedly from the head of al-Qaida in Iraq has threatened to kill Jordan’s King Abdullah II and bomb more hotels and tourist sites. The speaker on the tape, identified as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also said the group’s suicide bombers did not intend to bomb a Jordanian wedding party at an Amman hotel last week, killing about 30 people.

Al-Zarqawi said the bomber who detonated his explosives in the Radisson SAS hotel on November 9 was targeting a hall where he claimed Israeli and American intelligence officials were meeting.

Al-Zarqawi accused the Jordanian government of hiding casualties among Israeli and American intelligence agents, and he insisted al-Qaida in Iraq was not targeting fellow Muslims.

“We want to assure you that... you are more beloved to us than ourselves,” al-Zarqawi said, addressing Jordanians.