Nine killed in Baghdad gas tanker blast
Nine people died and 14 were seriously wounded in a gas tanker explosion in west Baghdad just hours after a surprise visit to the Iraqi capital by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The butane truck was wired with explosives and blew up in the upmarket Mansour district, which houses many foreign missions and is home to top Iraqi government officials.
Three houses were destroyed in the blast.
In the nearby al-Yarmouk Hospital, several of the injured, with burn blisters on their blackened faces and limbs, cried and shivered in pain.
Abdel Imam, who witnessed the blast, said the gas tanker drove at high speed into the Mansour district with its lights turned off moments before its driver triggered the detonation.
He said a whole family died under the rubble of one of the houses demolished in the blast.
No members of the multinational forces were among the casualties, said Captain Brian Lucas, a US military spokesman in Baghdad. There were no injuries inside the embassies.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb exploded today near the car of the governor of eastern Diyala province, wounding four of his guards.
Governor Abdullah Rashid al-Jbouri was unharmed in the blast in the town of Khan Bani Saad, halfway between Baqouba and Baghdad. His four guards were receiving hospital treatment.
Mr Rumsfeld’s surprise one-day tour in Iraq took him to the cities of Mosul, Fallujah and Tikrit and the heavily barricaded Green Zone in Baghdad. He did not visit the Mansour area.
Throughout his meetings with US troops, he insisted that the insurgency that has plagued the country for months would be defeated.
But violence has escalated even after the US offensive in Fallujah last month that largely captured the guerrilla’s main stronghold.
On Tuesday, insurgents in Mosul, a northern city that has become a centre for violence, carried out the deadliest yet against Americans – a suicide attack on a mess tent at a US base.
The blast – claimed by the radical Islamic group known as the Ansar al-Sunnah Army – killed 22 people, most of them American soldiers and civilians. The bomber believed to have carried out the attack was probably wearing an Iraqi military uniform.
In Fallujah, around 4,000 displaced citizens returned to inspect their homes yesterday, the second day that authorities have allowed some residents back into the devastated city.
Much of Fallujah remains uninhabitable since the US offensive because of destroyed homes, unexploded ordinance on the streets, lack of water or basic supplies and commodities.
Many of those who arrived yesterday were shocked and angry. Some said they would rather remain in makeshift camps outside the town than return to their bombed-out homes.
