| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 |
| Iraq violence: Two car bombs kill 80 in Iraq |
About 80 people were killed and over 140 others wounded in near-simultaneous car-bomb explosions at a crowded street market in central Baghdad, Iraq.
The twin explosions left the pavement scattered with shards of metal, tattered vending carts, and bloodied human remains.
The daylight attack at the Bab al-Sherji market was the second mass-casualty bombing in Baghdad in a week and the deadliest in 2007.
Those who were targeted were T-shirt vendors, DVD dealers, and fruit peddlers who are mostly working-class Shi'ite Muslims -- a sign that the Sunni Muslim insurgency remains capable of inflicting heavy losses even as the Iraqi and the United States forces are preparing for a security crackdown on Sunni rebels.
The attack came as Shi'ite Muslims observe Ashura, a 10-day religious holiday commemorating the death of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson in the seventh century.
The car-bombs exploded within seconds of each other around noon -- the peak shopping time -- and sent a dark mushroom of smoke high into the blue sky over Baghdad.
Witnesses said a suicide attacker drove in with one of the bombs, veering his vehicle into a cluster of stands before blowing it up.
A second car exploded about 150 yards to the north-east along the same street.
At the Baghdad market, a female customer had just asked fruit vendor Ali Khadhim for oranges. As he turned from his wooden trolley to fill her order, the force of the explosion threw him about 10 yards away, he said. By the time he recovered his possessions, the woman was gone.
The bombing was the worst carnage since the November 23, 2006, attack in the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City that killed over 200 people.
In all, 65 people had been killed in a bombing at a university in Baghdad on January 16, 2007.
Iraqi officials see a connection with the earlier attacks and have blamed the Sunni Muslim insurgents and supporters of the former government of Saddam Hussein.
"One can say there is a pattern emerging. They are attacking the infrastructure of our society. One is the university, one is the marketplace. It is really very, very, worrying. The government must take this very seriously," Haider al Ebadi, a Shiite member of Parliament, said.Labels: iraq |
| posted by a correspondent @ 8:06 AM |
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