85 die in triple car bombing

2005-09-29 22:02

Baghdad - At least 85 people were killed and more than 110 wounded on Thursday when three car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in the mainly Shiite central Iraqi town of Balad, police said.

Two pick-up trucks blew up in a central shopping street at 18:30 (14:30 GMT) and 18:40, with a third pick-up exploding in another neighbourhood 10 minutes later, local police Lieutenant-Colonel Adel Abdallah said.

A fourth car bomb exploded an hour later in northern Baghdad, targeting an army patrol, although no casualties were immediately reported.

Abdallah said at least 85 people were killed and more than 110 wounded in the blasts.

A doctor at Baghdad's Khadimiyah hospital said 40 ambulances were dispatched to Balad but none had yet returned.

A suicide car bombing in Balad, some 70km north of the capital, in June killed 10 Iraqis while another targeting Iraqi security forces in the town in January killed 19.

'All-out war' on Shiite population

While Ramadi is predominantly Shiite, its province of Salaheddin is mainly Sunni, and the triple bombing appeared to be the latest bid by Sunni extremists to spark a sectarian war.

Earlier this month, Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared "all-out war" on the majority Shiite population.

Some 130 people, most of them Shiites, were killed in car bombings in Baghdad on the day of the announcement.

At least nine people were killed in other violence on Thursday in the country, including four policemen in two separate attacks in Baghdad, and the mayor of Al-Khalis, a town 80km north of the capital.

The US military said that five of its soldiers had been killed in a bombing in the restive western town of Ramadi on Wednesday, without providing further details.

The deaths brings to at least 1 919 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003. Another five civilian Defence Department employees have also been killed, according to Pentagon figures.

- AFP