IRAQ: Bombers kill dozens in Kerbala, Baghdad bridge hit

Suicide car bomber kills at least 40 people and wounds 128 at crowded bus station in Iraqi holy city of Kerbala while in the capital, Baghdad, a bomber detonates device near Jadriyah bridge, killing 10 people, and wounding 15 others in the second major attack on a bridge in past three days. In the northern city of Kirkuk, a bomb planted inside a civilian explodes and kills four members of the same family. A suicide car bomber killed at least 40 people and wounded 128 at a crowded bus station near a major Shi'ite shrine in the Iraqi holy city of Kerbala on Saturday (April 14), police and hospital sources said. Witnesses in Kerbala said the blast sent body parts flying into the air. Shortly afterwards, Iraqi police fired shots into the air to disperse protesting crowds who blamed local authorities for failing to provide security. U.S. helicopters buzzed over Kerbala, one of the holiest cities in Iraq. A police source put the death toll in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) southwest of Baghdad, at 65. But Khaled al-Rubaie, media director of al-Husseini hospital in Kerbala, said 41 people had been killed and 128 wounded, many of them women and children. Salim Katham, media director of Kerbala's health directorate, said 32 people were killed and 58 wounded. The attack occurred near a crowded market 200 metres from the Imam Hussein shrine, where the grandson of Islam's Prophet Mohammad is buried -- one of the most important sites for Shi'ites. In Baghdad, police said a suicide car bomber detonated his device near a checkpoint at the southern Jadriyah bridge, killing 10 people, wounding 15 and burning several cars in the second major attack on a bridge in the capital in the past three days. Television footage of Saturday's bombing at the bridge in Baghdad showed the twisted, blackened wreck of what was thought to have been the car used to deliver the bomb as ambulance and rescue services worked to save the wounded. Charred corpses were piled in the back of an ambulance, while a pair of sneakers lay next to the badly burned body of another victim on the bridge, which suffered little damage. On Thursday (April 12), a truck bomb killed seven people on the Sarafiya bridge in northern Baghdad, destroying most of the steel structure in an attack parliament speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani called a conspiracy to split the city. A dozen bridges cross the Tigris in Baghdad, linking the east and the west of the city. Separately, a bomb planted inside a civilian car exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk on Saturday, killing three passengers and a driver, police said. It was reported that the four killed in the blast, which took place in Kirkuk's Korneesh district, were members of the same family. According to police, the car blew up prematurely before reaching the city's market, the location police believe to have been the target of the attack. The oil-rich city of Kirkuk has witnessed a spate of attacks in recent months amid tensions between the Kurdish and Sunni Arab population of the city. Saturday's violence came a day after leaders from across Iraq's sectarian divide pleaded for unity as they gathered under high security at a special session of parliament to condemn a suicide bombing that tore through the building on Thursday. An al Qaeda-backed group, the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, claimed responsibility in a Web statement for the attack -- the worst so far on Baghdad's most secure area -- which killed a member of parliament and wounded two dozen other people in the building's restaurant. A two-month old, U.S.-backed crackdown in Baghdad seen as a last-ditch attempt to halt Iraq's slide into civil war between majority Shi'ites and once dominant Sunnis has succeeded in reducing the number of targeted killings, but U.S. and Iraqi commanders find car and suicide bombers much harder to stop.

ITN Source | April 14, 2007

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