Twin car bombings kill 18 in Baghdad
A pair of car bombs exploded near the Iraqi interior minister’s offices in Baghdad today, killing 18 people and wounding three dozen others.
Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the blasts, the latest in several weeks of stepped up attacks that followed a relative lull in violence in mid-March.
In a statement posted on the internet, al-Qaida in Iraq, headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said the bombings were targeting police who were guarding the offices of Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, who is in charge of the nation’s police. The claim couldn’t be independently verified.
Al-Naqib was in his office at the time of the attack, but he left to examine the damage and announced that he was fine. The explosions didn’t damage the building where he works.
The blasts sent large plumes of smoke rising over the city and threw passers-by to the ground. Ali Ahmed, 28, said he was selling ice cream from his stall when he heard an explosion, followed by gunfire and another explosion.
“My stall was partially destroyed because of this terrorist act,” he said. “Some people have lost their lives. As for me, I have now lost my source of income.”
The blasts blew out the windows of nearby restaurants in the upscale neighbourhood of Baghdad, near the heavily fortified Green Zone.
Panicked students from a nearby secondary school wept and shouted that they weren’t going to attend classes anymore, waiting in the street for school buses or relatives to pick them up.
After clearing the area, US forces set off a third car bomb that apparently failed to explode earlier, police said. No one was injured in the last blast.
Interior Ministry official Captain Ahmed Ismael said the first two blasts killed 18 and wounded 36.
One government worker said five garbage collectors he was supervising were among the dead.
Insurgents kept up attacks today against Iraq’s security forces, which the US military says must be able to impose a level of calm in the country before Ameican troops can depart.
Gunmen hit police patrolling near the central Iraqi city of Baqouba, killing one officer and wounding three others, Lieutenat Colonel Muthafar al-Jubori said.
In the capital, attackers shot and killed 1st Lieutenant Firas Hussein as he made his way to work at Iraq’s intelligence service, police Major Mousa Abdul Karim said.
In Kirkuk, seven gunmen riding in two vehicles fired on the police station just south of Kirkuk shortly after dawn, killing five police officers and one civilian, police Brigadier Sarhat Qadir said.
Militant group Ansar al-Sunnah claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in an internet posting that its ”knights of Islam” attacked “renegade policemen doing their morning training.” The claim couldn’t be independently verified.
Ansar al-Sunnah also said it had teamed up with Zarqawi’s al Qaida in Iraq for an attack earlier this week in Kirkuk – an unusual mention of cooperation among Iraq’s disparate and sometimes competing militant groups.
The web posting, which couldn’t be independently corroborated, said yesterday’s explosive device that killed 12 police was composed of three bombs buried under a decoy device – a lure to draw policemen to the blast site.
In Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded outside a US military installation, injuring nine civilians and setting nearby houses ablaze, police Lieutenant Colonel Amer Ahmed said.
The US military said one American soldier and two Iraqi troops suffered injuries in the bomb blast – but maintained there were no civilian casualties.
