Suicide bombers targeted Shiite worshippers as they left morning prayers Thursday at two Baghdad mosques, killing 19 people and injuring 50 others, police said. The bombings in Baghdad occurred as Shiite worshippers celebrated the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. No group claimed responsibility, but attacks on Shiite civilians are widely associated with Sunni extremists like al Qaeda in Iraq hoping to re-ignite the sectarian conflict that pushed the nation to the brink of civil war two years ago.Rico says he's speechless, yet again, at the intensity of hatred people will derive from such sectarian bullshit... (Though, if you look at what happened in Northern Ireland, it's not a Middle Eastern problem but a religion problem.)
In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber in a white Mercedes sedan detonated his explosives about 20 yards from a mosque in Zafaraniyah in southeastern Baghdad. He set off the bomb when Iraqi soldiers tried to stop him from approaching the building, police said. That attack killed 14 people, including three Iraqi soldiers, and injured 28, police said.
In the other attack, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt as worshippers were leaving the Rasoul mosque in the capital's eastern New Baghdad district. Five people died and 22 were injured, police said. The attacker approached the mosque and set off the explosion as a suspicious guard tried to keep him from entering. The guard was among those killed, police said.
A witness to the Zafaraniyah attack said he saw a white car speed toward the mosque and then heard a huge explosion that sparked a fire and heavy smoke. Ammar Hashim, 25, who runs a car parts shop nearby, rushed to the site and saw "a damaged and burned Humvee with dead and burned bodies and many injured people crying out in pain."
"Pools of blood and the smell of burned flesh was everywhere and I saw a man of about 70 bleeding and lying on the ground from injuries," said Hashim, whose brother was also injured by broken glass in his shop.
02 October 2008
Back in the Shi'ite again
The AP has a story by Vanessa Gera:
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