Second day of Baghdad carnage

2004-06-14 08:29

Baghdad - A car bomb exploded just as two Western-style all-terrain vehicles passed by in a busy Baghdad street, with the blast knocking part of the front off a building and totally destroying the cars, police officers and witnesses said.

An AFP photographer saw four bodies covered in sheets at the site of the blast at the entrance to Sadoun Street, a main commercial boulevard on the eastern side of the Tigris, alongside the city's Tahrir Square, lined with restaurants, shops and residences.

Doctor Salah Mahdi said the city's neurosurgical hospital had dealt with at least two people who had been killed and 17 injured victims.

Captain Issam Ali, a security officer at a nearby hospital, said three dead had been taken to his hospital and 14 people had been brought there with injuries, many of them with serious burns and lost limbs.

Police Colonel Qadri Abdul-Latif said at least 12 people were killed, many of them in shops and a two-storey building which were heavily damaged in the blast.

The attack happened just after 8:00 (04:00 GMT) as the convoy of Western-style vehicles sped down the street, not far from the main headquarters of the US-led forces across the river.

"For sure it was a suicide bombing," said Sergeant Sayed Khamat, who witnessed the attack.

Other witnesses said they thought a parked car was detonated by remote control as the convoy sped by.

Khamat said the two sports-utility vehicles destroyed resembled cars used by the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority, but there was no independent confirmation.

"There were many casualties. The vehicles were destroyed completely."

Khamat said three people, badly injured, were taken out of the first vehicle and rushed to hospital. One vehicle was blown on to the pavement, and a third civilian car was burnt in the blast. It was not clear if it was the attacker's car.

Flames completely devoured one vehicle, reducing it to burning chunks of metal. Bits of flesh were strewn on the pavement.

An angry crowd started to yell: "No, No America, No, No Governing Council" and to hit the burnt-out jeeps with sticks.

The front of one building was destroyed and dazed people staggered out of the demolished ruins. People piled wounded on to the back of trucks and inside cars and rushed them to the hospital. Some medics bandaged wounded and bloodied Iraqis on the pavement.

Saad Jassim Mohammed, 24, eating in a restaurant when it happened, said: "I rushed up to the building and I took out six dead bodies and I took out two people who were alive."

Army helicopters buzzed overhead. Ambulance sirens wailed. The heavy percussion of the blast rattled the city shortly after 08:00 (04:00 GMT).

Police sealed off the area. Since the new Iraqi caretaker government was unveiled on June 1, there has been a wave of car bombings and assassinations of government officials.

At least 12 people were killed and 23 wounded in a suicide bombing in Baghdad on Sunday. AP/AFP

- News24