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Blast in baghdad rebel district kills 47 Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Blast in Baghdad Rebel District Kills at Least 47
Tue Sep 14, 2004 06:22 AM ET
By Mariam Karouny and Luke Baker
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A huge explosion tore through a crowded market close to the west Baghdad police headquarters on Tuesday, killing at least 47 people in the deadliest single attack in the capital in six months.
The U.S. army and Iraqi Interior Ministry said the blast was a car bomb attack on the police building in Haifa Street, a Baghdad area known as a haven for guerrillas and criminals.
The Health Ministry said 47 had been killed and 114 wounded.
The Interior Ministry and witnesses said there may have been at least two simultaneous car bomb blasts. Witnesses said mortars may also have been fired at the same time.
"I was standing there talking to my friend when suddenly all I saw was blood, and my friend lying dead," said an Iraqi man who gave his name as Zafer, speaking from his hospital bed with blood and scratches on his face and bandages on his stomach.
Hospital workers hosed pools of blood from the floor.
At the blast site, rescuers pulled bodies from mangled market stalls. The area was littered with shoes, clothes and body parts, as well as fruit and vegetables from the market.
Bloodstained corpses lay on pavements strewn with chairs, glass and rubble from blown-out shopfronts. Dazed bystanders vainly checked bodies for signs of life.
Smoke from blazing vehicles in the middle of the street billowed into the sky, as fire crews tried to douse the flames. A huge crater was punched into the road. Ambulances with sirens wailing ferried the dead and wounded to hospital as U.S. helicopters buzzed overhead.
In a separate attack in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, 12 policemen were killed and two wounded when gunmen opened fire on their minibus, a source at the town's main hospital said.
On Sunday, guerrillas mounted multiple car bomb and mortar attacks in central Baghdad, during a day of violence in which more than 100 people were killed across the country.
Many of Sunday's casualties were also in Haifa Street, where U.S. troops have repeatedly clashed with guerrillas.
SURGE IN VIOLENCE
Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib visited the site of Tuesday's blast and condemned the perpetrators.
"They are targeting the Iraqi people and they are trying to destroy Iraq. These powers won't stop the rebuilding of Iraq," he said. "There will be no space for the terrorists and the enemies of Iraq."
Fighting has surged in Iraq over the last few days after U.S.-led forces launched a drive to pacify areas of the country under guerrilla control ahead of elections due in January.
The American military has mounted several air strikes on Falluja, a city controlled by insurgents. It says the attacks have targeted militants loyal to Jordanian al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for a series of car bomb attacks and the killing of foreign hostages.
U.S. forces have also launched an offensive in Tal Afar, a mainly Turkmen town close to the Syrian border in northern Iraq which it says has become a haven for foreign fighters.
The Health Ministry has said at least 60 people were killed in fighting in Tal Afar over the past week.
Air Force Brigadier General Erv Lessel, deputy director of operations for the U.S. military in Iraq, told Reuters the U.S. military was determined to restore stability to rebel-held areas before the planned elections.
"The overriding strategy is to gain local security control in all the cities throughout Iraq by the end of December," he said.
"That local control has to do with getting capable Iraqi security forces -- police backed up by Iraqi National Guards -- and competent local authorities in control of the cities so that life can go on, so that reconstruction can continue, so that elections can take place."
(Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia and Ed Cropley in Baghdad and Faris Mehdawi in Baquba)
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