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| May 12, 2005 | Thursday | Rabi-us-Sani 3, 1426 |
76 killed in Iraq suicide attacks
TIKRIT, May 11: At least 76 people were killed in a bloody wave of bomb blasts in three Iraqi towns on Wednesday, as US troops battled guerillas in the western hinterland to drive out supporters of militant leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Five morning explosions left trails of carnage in the northern towns of Tikrit and Hawijah, and in the capital Baghdad, the deadliest attacks in a mounting wave of violence since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari formed his government on May 3.
In Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle among a crowd of mainly Shia labourers from southern Iraq who had gathered to look for work.
Police said at least 33 people were killed and 80 wounded in the attack, one of the day’s four suicide bombings.
A policeman at the scene of the blast in Tikrit, 175 km north of Baghdad, said the explosion was near a police station but the target was the crowd of workers.
“This is not jihad. There was no US patrol, no Iraqi police at the time of the blast. This car bomb tore civilians to shreds,” said Zeid Hamad whose mobile telephone shop lies a few metres (yards) away from the blast site.
Fearing more suicide attacks, police later banned all solo-passenger vehicles from the city.
“What I saw was a tragedy,” said Ibrahim Mohammed, a migrant worker from the town of Kut who witnessed the blast. “Some people had their heads torn off by the explosion, some were burned, some were ripped to pieces.”
Iraqi militant group Army of Ansar al Sunna claimed responsibility for the bombing in an Internet statement. It said the workers were “apostates who sold their religion and became slaves and agents of the crusaders.”
In the town of Hawija, southwest of the strategic oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a suicide bomber walked up to an army recruitment centre and detonated an explosive belt, killing at least 32 people and wounding 34, hospital sources said.
A third suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a police station in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, killing at least three civilians. Police said the bomber was trying to reach the police station but blew up his car before he got there.
A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol in the Mansour district of Baghdad killed two policemen and a civilian, officials at the Interior Ministry said.
Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol in western Baghdad, killing three soldiers, police said. And a mortar round hit the Oil Ministry in Baghdad but there were no casualties.
Guerillas have launched a blitz of attacks since Iraq’s political leaders announced a new cabinet on April 28. —AFP/Reuters
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