Winks Blog

At Least 183 Killed In A String of Baghdad Bombings

Good morning,

As US news stations continue to rehash and repeatedly go over the VA Tech tragedy, there has been barely a mention of the at least 183 Iraqis killed today in a string of bombings in Baghdad today.

BAGHDAD - Four large bombs exploded in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 183 people and wounding scores _ the deadliest day in the city since the start of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital two months ago.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the bombings "horrifying" and accused al-Qaida of being behind them.

In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in central Baghdad, killing at least 122 people and wounding 148, said Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.
A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Among the dead were several construction workers who had been rebuilding the mostly Shiite marketplace after a bombing destroyed many shops and killed 137 people there in February, the police official said.

The laborers typically finish work around 4 p.m. each day. One of those wounded, 28-year-old Salih Mustafa, said he was waiting for a minibus to head home when the blast went off at 4:05 p.m.

"I rushed with others to give a hand and help the victims," he said. "I saw three bodies in a wooden cart, and civilian cars were helping to transfer the victims. It was really a horrible scene."

The market is situated on a side street lined with shops and vendors selling produce, meat and other staples. It is also about 500 yards from a Sunni shrine.

About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shiite Muslim neighborhood and a stronghold for the militia led by radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The explosion killed at least 41 people, including five Iraqi security officers, and wounded 76, police and hospital officials said.

Black smoke billowed from a jumble of at least eight incinerated vehicles that were in a jam of cars stopped at the checkpoint. Bystanders scrambled over twisted metal to drag victims from the smoldering wreckage as Iraqi guards staggered around stunned.
Earlier, a parked car exploded near a private hospital in the central neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and wounding 13, police said. The blast damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.

The fourth explosion was from a bomb left on a minibus in the central Rusafi area, area, killing four people and wounding six others, police said.

U.S. officials had cited a slight decrease in sectarian killings in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown was launched Feb. 14. But the past week has seen several spectacular attacks on the capital, including a suicide bombing inside parliament and a powerful blast that collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River.

In Israel, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the military had anticipated that al-Qaida terrorists and other insurgents "would attempt to increase the violence in order to make the plan a failure or to make the people of Iraq believe the plan is a failure."

"Obviously the level of fatalities today is a horrifying thing. But I think it illustrates another point: These terrorists are killing innocent men, women and children who are Iraqis. They're killing their countrymen," he said at a news conference in Tel Aviv with his Israeli counterpart, Amir Peretz.

Nationwide the number of people killed or found dead today was 233, which was second only to a total of 281 killed or found dead on Nov. 23, 2006. Those figures are according to AP record-keeping, which began in May 2005

Have a nice day.

posted by Wink @ 11:11 AM