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BAGHDAD, Dec 19: An explosion destroyed a Baghdad office of Iraq’s largest Shia party on Friday in an attack the group blamed on Saddam Hussein’s supporters.
But a US general put a different spin on the incident, saying a structural fault, and not a bomb, caused the collapse of the shelter.
This was the second time this week that US officials disputed Iraqi claims of deliberate attack, following the explosion of a tanker truck in the capital that, according to Iraqis, was caused by a suicide bomb.
Witnesses said a woman was killed and seven people were wounded in the blast at the offices of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which works with US occupiers. The party blamed Saddam loyalists, as it did after Wednesday’s assassination of one of its leaders.
“The men of the (Saddam) regime and terrorist elements are behind the attack,” Mohsin al Hakim, a party official, said.
Some residents said a bomb had levelled the house while others reported hearing aircraft overhead just before the explosion.
US VERSION: Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt of the US Army, speaking at a press conference in Baghdad, first said he knew nothing of the incident, but then added that he had just received a report indicating there was no explosion.
“The Iraqi police service reported to First Armored Division that the building collapsed due to a structural integrity problem,” he said.
CURFEW: Polish forces imposed a night-time curfew in Karbala on Friday in a bid to uncover “terrorists”.
Military vehicles criss-crossed the city at night fall, as soldiers used loudspeakers to warn residents in Arabic not to leave their homes because Polish forces would conduct “searches to root out terrorists and saboteurs”.
US-led occupation forces have largely conducted house-to-house searches in Baghdad and the so-called Sunni triangle, west of the capital and home to the majority of anti-American attacks, not in the south.—AFP
