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Photo: AP
Car bomb in Iraq (Archive photo)
Photo: AP
Saddam's execution
Photo: AFP

Iraq bombs kill more than 70 as Saddam executed

Dozens killed, wounded in series of bloody car bombings that cause chaos after government's pre-dawn execution of ousted dictator

More than 70 Iraqis have been killed and dozens more wounded in a series of bloody car bombings that caused chaos after the government's pre-dawn execution of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

 

Just hours after Saddam swung from the scaffold in Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in a fish market in the Shiite city of Kufa, killing at least 36 people as the country continued to plunge into the abyss of civil strife.

 

Doctor Monther al-Ithari, the health director in Najaf province, said another 58 people were wounded in the attack, most of them women and children shopping ahead of the four-day Eid al-Adha holiday.

 

Colonel Ali Jrawi of the Kufa police said that the car, a Korean-made Kia, had been parked in a popular fish market when it exploded, ripping through the weekend crowd Saturday.

 

It was not clear, however, whether the attack amounted to a reprisal from Saddam supporters who denounced the US-backed Iraqi government for the late dictator's death amid celebrations among the Shiite majority over his demise.

 

Kufa is a small town south of Baghdad near the Shiite pilgrimage centre of Najaf and a stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has an office there and whose father was killed during the Saddam regime.

  

A triple car later bombing ripped through a mixed area of northern Baghdad, adding at least another 37 corpses to the grim daily toll.

 

In the coordinated attack, three vehicles exploded in rapid succession in a the district of Hurriyah, security and military sources said.

 

Daily occurrences

A military source put the death toll at 20, with dozens more wounded, while a security source said up to 25 people had been killed in the attack.

 

Yet another car bombing - daily occurrences, with Iraqi violence at an unprecedented high - outside the al-Iskan children's hospital killed two people and wounded eight in north Baghdad, a security source said.

 

The military source, also speaking on condition of anonymity, put the death toll at three with another 10 treated for wounds.

 

Car bomb attacks on Shiite crowds in Iraq are usually blamed on Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic Army of Iraq, which is linked to Saddam's defunct Baath party.

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.30.06, 16:42
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