|
Baghdad: 'spectacular' blasts
27/10/2003 10:45 - (SA)
Baghdad - Guerrillas carried out a series of deadly attacks around the Iraqi capital on Monday, with 19 people killed and 68 wounded in car bombings of the International Committee of Red Cross offices and four police stations.
The blast outside the ICRC left at least 12 dead, while seven were killed, including three Iraqi policemen at the police stations.
Baghdad's hospitals put the overall number of wounded at 58, on top of 10 soldiers reported hurt by the US army.
The bombings shrouded the Baghdad skyline in smoke, an ominous start for the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan as the anti-US insurgents escalated their campaign from bleeding the coalition with ambushes to apparently orchestrating mass terror.
In another blow to the coalition, a US soldier was killed and two wounded late on Sunday in a mortar attack in Abu Gharib prison near Baghdad, a military official said.
"One military police officer was killed and two others wounded in the Abu Gharib prison at 22:30(19:30 GMT) on Sunday," the spokesperson said.
The deaths raised to 110 the number of US soldiers killed since major hostilities were declared over on May 1.
Iraq's deputy interior minister Ahmed Ibrahim blamed fallen dictator Saddam Hussein for the bombings, which came a day after eight to 10 rockets pounded a hotel in the coalition's heavily guarded Baghdad complex, killing one US soldier and wounding 17.
"Saddam Hussein is behind all the disasters that are happening in Iraq," the deputy minister.
An ambulance rammed into a barricade in front of the ICRC building at around 08:30 (05:30 GMT), bursting into flames and sending a thick black cloud of smoke over the city.
"An Iraqi hospital ambulance sped toward us. I waved my arms to stop it. It barrelled into the barrier blocking the headquarters and burst into flames," said ICRC guard Saba Ali Ihsan.
"The driver died and my colleague was wounded."
The remains of burnt out vehicles smouldered on the street.
At the Ibn Nafiz hospital and morgue, at least 12 bodies were laid out.
"The bodies were burnt or badly maimed," said photographer Marwan Naamani, who visited the morgue and counted eight corpses.
But the assault on the ICRC was not the only tragedy on Monday morning.
Within minutes of the first bombing, a police station in Baghdad's Karkh neighbourhood was ripped by a massive car bomb explosion.
Three policemen were killed and 10 US soldiers wounded at the Al-Elam police station when a car exploded at 08:30 am, a US soldier said.
'Pieces of my colleagues'
"We found many pieces of my colleagues on the ground," policeman Abdel Zahar Salim told reporters by the station. Flesh still lay on the asphalt as 16 burnt out vehicles smouldered and ambulances sped to the station.
The car crashed into the station's parking lot and burst into flames as 40 policemen gathered to start work.
Two American military vehicles were in the lot and two US soldiers were there, he said.
- AFP
|
News
