Two killed in Basra car bomb attack: Loud explosion rocks Baghdad
BASRA, March 18: Two people were killed in a car bomb attack while a third man was beaten to death by a mob after the blast targeting a hotel in Iraq's main southern city of Basra
, Iraqi police and medical sources said.
"We have received two dead and one man who was beaten by the crowd who died on arrival at the hospital," said Manal Nassrah, an emergency doctor at Basra's Al Sadr university hospital.
The wounded counted a nine-year-old boy and two middle-aged men who were lightly wounded, the doctor said. Earlier, police official Ali Radi Zaer said: "Two people were killed and one wounded in the explosion of a Mercedes car near Buraq hotel on Al Istiqlal street in the city centre."
But a spokeswoman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Basra, Paola Della Casa, said a British military contingent on patrol in the area at the time believed it was a roadside bomb.
"The report is so far an IED (improvised explosive device)," she said, adding it was under investigation. She put the casualty toll at two wounded. Shortly after the explosion, a crowd seized a man and beat him up, witnesses said. The apparent suspect, an unidentified man, was wounded and taken away by police in an ambulance, they said.
British soldiers, which control the city, and Iraqi police cordoned off the area, preventing journalists from approaching the site. Fire fighters put out the fire in the car, which exploded metres away from the newly-renovated three-floor hotel, which caters mainly to Iraqis.
Another loud explosion rocked central Baghdad on Thursday night after apparent rockets hit two hotels used by coalition contractors and a mortar or rocket hit the coalition's main grounds.
The loud bang was followed by a barrage of automatic weapon fire and another powerful explosion. Smoke hung in the air. It was not immediately clear if there had been any casualties.
The explosion followed apparent rocket fire on two hotels not far from the site of Wednesday night's suicide car bombing that killed seven people and wounded 32 others.
One rocket hit a hotel roof and a pair of rockets smashed in the windows of the other hotel. A rocket or mortar round also hit the US-led coalition's compound in Baghdad on Thursday night, but it was unclear what damage had been caused or if anyone had been hurt, a US army spokesman said. -AFP
