73 die in Iraq attacks
2004-09-14 21:14
Baghdad - At least 73 people were killed on Tuesday in a Baghdad car bombing and in an ambush on police in Baquba, claimed by Al-Qaeda-linked militants, as fighting flared between US troops and insurgents in Ramadi.
Fifty people died in Baghdad, 47 of them when a vehicle packed with explosives blew up outside the main police headquarters.
More than 100 people were wounded in the bombing, the most lethal in the country for two months.
Shrapnel tore the crowded district, littering body parts everywhere and leaving pools of congealed blood on the pavement.
"More than 200 people were queuing outside the main gate.
"I came with six friends and now I'm alone.
"They've gone, all of them," said aspiring police recruit Nabeel Mohammed, slightly wounded in the blast.
Anguished relatives, seeking news of loved ones, frantically turned over ID cards or inspected dozens of pairs of shoes lined up on the roadside by police near the crater gouged in the ground by the blast.
Interior minister Falah al-Naqib blamed the bombing on "Arab groups" as angry men cursed US President George W Bush.
Further north in the Sunni Muslim hot spot of Baquba, 13 people died in an ambush, all but one of them a policemen.
The violence washing over Iraq has spiked in the past two weeks, amid a wave of attacks on Sunday also claimed by militants loyal to al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and US assaults on Fallujah and Tall Afar.
Six coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq over the past 24 hours.
Using an Islamist website, the military wing of Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group purportedly claimed to have orchestrated what it called a suicide bombing in Baghdad and the Baquba gun attack.
"Heroes of the Tawhid wal Jihad are striking with an iron hand anyone who betrays religion and honor," said one of two statements, whose authenticity were impossible to confirm.
Out west, 10 people were killed and 22 wounded in clashes between US troops and insurgents in the Sunni Muslim hotspot of Ramadi, where the sound of gunfire echoed from the city centre, the health ministry said.
On a European tour to drum up support for his country, President Ghazi al-Yawar insisted Iraq was heading towards democracy despite the unrest, before pressing Nato and the EU to lend reconstruction help.