HILLA, Feb 18: Suicide car bombers killed at least 11 Iraqis and wounded 58 foreign troops on Wednesday in twin attacks on a military base south of Baghdad.
A spokesman for Polish-led forces in Hilla, about 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, said 44 Iraqis were also wounded in the blasts.
Lieut-Col Robert Strzelecki said that guards outside the base managed to stop one of the cars by shooting at it but that a second car exploded after smashing into a wall.
"At 0415 GMT near the logistics base there was a terrorist attack using two cars," Strzelecki said. "We found the bodies of the two drivers, and two Iraqis standing in the street were killed."
US-led Coalition Provisional Authority spokeswoman Hilary White later put the death toll much higher. "We can confirm that more than 11 Iraqis were killed," she told Reuters. "It killed men, women and children."
The blasts blew the facing and roofs off of homes outside the base, and left survivors blaming Iraq's US occupiers for the bloodshed. "We heard the sound of a plane overhead and a rocket landed and then a second rocket landed," said Omar Zayed, 17, who lives near the site of the explosion.
Two boys wounded in the explosion lost their parents. One of them, 10-year-old Seif Saleh, lay in a hospital bed complaining of pain and asking for his father as the coffins of his parents were brought into the hospital. The wounded included at least 12 Filipinos, 12 Poles, 10 Hungarians and two Americans. -Reuters
