15 die in mosque blast

2005-01-21 19:26

Salwan Binni

Baghadad - Fifteen people were killed and scores wounded in a car bomb attack on Friday on a Shiite mosque in Baghdad as they celebrated a major Muslim holiday.

Hospital officials said 15 people were killed - two of them children - and 39 wounded when a car bomb ripped through a crowd of worshippers pouring out of the Shuhada al-Taf Shiite mosque after special prayers for the Eid al-Adha feast.

The shrapnel and debris cut children who had gathered around as Shiite Dawa party volunteers gave away candies, cake and watches to celebrate the holiday, the most sacred on the Muslim calendar, said mosque caretaker Mahmud Mohammed.

"The people were leaving the mosque when someone sped up in a car and rammed a minibus which was parked there in front of the mosque," he said.

Senior Shiite political leader Abdel Aziz Hakim said the attack was the latest salvo by extremists trying to stoke civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.

"It is quite obvious why there is such an attack. They are trying to create sectarian strife," Hakim said.

At the scene of the bombing, a man who lost two of his cousins in the blast vowed he would not be deterred by the attack and would vote on election day despite the soaring anti-Shiite violence.

"The elections will go ahead regardless and we have to vote in spite of all those sacrifices. The people have to seize this opportunity because voting is the only viable way of ending the occupation," Qasem Jabbar said.

Also on Friday, six Iraqi soldiers were killed in a string of incidents in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad, security sources said.

A US soldier was also killed early on Friday in a raid against a bomb-making cell in Duluiyah, a restive Sunni bastion north of Baghdad, a statement said.

One insurgent was killed in the operation and 12 arrested.

Three Iraqi civilians working as contractors with the US military were also killed Friday in an ambush in northern Iraq, police said.

But violence also spread to the usually quiet south. An Italian soldier was killed when his helicopter came under fire, the Italian ANSA news agency quoted military officials as saying.

The rare Italian casualty came a day after a car bomb at the entrance of British base near the southern city of Basra left one Iraqi civilian dead and nine British troops wounded.

Meanwhile, the lives of eight abducted Chinese hung in limbo, after a 48-hour deadline for Beijing to "clarify" its position in Iraq expired on Thursday.

A new purported video released by Dubai-based satellite television channel al-Arabiya, the kidnappers who threatened to kill them said they would show "mercy" toward them if Beijing banned its citizens from going to Iraq.

Beijing opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 but, like other nations, its companies have chased lucrative reconstruction contracts in the war-ravaged country.

- AFP