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Twin car bombs rock Baghdad
11/02/2008 14:20 - (SA)
Baghdad - Twin car bombs struck near the compound of one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite politicians on Monday, killing at least six civilians and wounding 20, police and hospital officials said.
A dense cloud of black smoke rose over the offices of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the country's largest Shi'ite party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC. More than dozen cars were destroyed in a blackened area, and a brick building was blown apart.
Police said the bombs were planted in cars lined up at a petrol station nearby.
The blasts ripped a crater two metres wide in the tart. Television footage showed a soldier and a civilian being led away from the scene, pressing cloths to their bloodied heads as sirens wailed around them.
The violence came a day after car bombs and gunmen struck new US allies, police and civilians in northern Iraq, killing as many as 53 people in a spasm of violence that coincided with a visit by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates to Baghdad.
The deadliest of Sunday's attacks was near Balad, where Iraqi police and hospital officials said a suicide trucker killed 34 people near a checkpoint manned jointly by Iraqi police and US-backed security volunteers. The American military, however, put the death toll at 23.
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