Suicide bomber kills 30 at Iraq hospital

A SUICIDE car bomber attacked a hospital in central Iraq yesterday while US troops were handing out toys to children, killing 30 people, including four police guards, three women and two children, officials said.

Another 35 people were wounded in the morning attack in Mahmoudiya, about 32 kilometres south of Baghdad, said Dr Dawoud al-Taie, the director of the local hospital.

Elsewhere, two American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb south-west of Baghdad, bringing to at least six the number of US troops killed in the last two days.

Iraqi army Capt Ibrahim said the US soldiers were distributing toys to children in the hospital.

“It was an explosion at the gate of the hospital,” said one woman who had wounds on her face and legs. “My children are gone. My brother is gone.”

Mahmoudiya is a religiously-mixed town in the so-called triangle of death, a region known for attacks on coalition forces and Shi’ites moving through the area to visit shrines south of the region.

In July 13, a suicide bomber killed 18 children and teenagers getting sweets and toys from American soldiers in an impoverished Sh’iite Muslim neighbourhood of Baghdad.

A car bomb also exploded yesterday near a crowded soft drink stand in the Shi’ite city of Hillah, 97km south of Baghdad, killing at least two people.

In a separate attack, a bodyguard for the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party branch in Khalis, 80kmnorth of Baghdad, was wounded in a drive-by shooting.

In a press conference yesterday, government spokesperson Laith Kubba said that insurgent attacks are expected to rise before elections on December 15.

He said “Muslim extremists and Saddam [Hussein’s] criminals” will be making their last stand.

Yesterday, gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms burst into the home of a Sunni Arab sheikh, killing him, three of his sons and a son-in-law in an attack police said may have been aimed at discouraging members of the minority from participating in next month’s election.

Some insurgent groups have declared a boycott of the election and have threatened politicians who participate. Police said they suspected the sheikh’s death was designed as a warning to Sunni Arabs against heeding the US call.

Police Major Falah al-Mohammedawi denied that government forces were involved in the killings and blamed the insurgents.

The US hopes that a big Sunni turnout next month will produce a broad-based government that can win the minority’s trust, helping to take the steam out of the Sunni-led insurgency and hasten the day when American and other foreign troops can go home.

Most of the more than 140,000 US troops in Iraq got a traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey and all the trimmings at their bases yesterday.