IRAQ: Car bomb in Iraq's Shi'ite Kufa kills 59; mortars wound 8 as U.S. forces kill 2, arrest 7 in raid in Baghdad.

A car bomb hit a group of labourers after they boarded a minibus in a market in the city of Kufa in Iraq on Tuesday (July 18), killing 59 people and sparking clashes between protesters and police, witnesses and officials said. The blast, some 50-100 metres from a Shi'ite shrine, tore through the minibus after it had pulled out of the crowded market. Hospital and security sources said 132 people were wounded in the blast, which dealt a fresh blow to Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's efforts to promote national reconciliation. Police at the scene were pelted with rocks by members of an angry crowd. The protesters chanted to the police: "You are traitors!" "You are not doing your job!" "American agents!" Police then fired into the air to disperse the onlookers. Riyadh al-Shibni, a doctor in a Najaf health centre, said hospitals in Najaf and Kufa had received 59 bodies. Witnesses said the minibus had Baghdad licence plates. The blast destroyed six cars and two restaurants in the area. Violence between majority Shi'ites and Sunnis, dominant under Saddam Hussein but now the backbone of an insurgency against the U.S.-sponsored political process, has pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war. Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, has urged Iraqis to rally behind his reconciliation plan as the last hope to avert all-out war. But Shi'ite religious and political leaders have warned that mass attacks against their community by suspected Sunni insurgents meant their calls for restraint and to avoid retaliation were being ignored. Earlier this month, a suicide car bomber blasted two coach-loads of Iranian pilgrims in Kufa, killing 10 people and wounding 40. President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, called on clerics from both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim sects to condemn such violence, which he said aimed to destabilise the country and "to create a climate of mistrust among the citizens". Mortar rounds and rockets smashed into Baghdad's western neighbourhood of Ghazaliya on Tuesday (July 18), reducing one house to rubble and inflicting slight structural damage to a number of houses, witnesses said. Witnesses said that at least eight people were wounded in the attack, near the Al-Hadithi Mosque. Meanwhile, U.S. forces raided a house in northern Baghdad, killing two people and arresting seven others, police sources and relatives said. Witnesses said that the U.S. forces raided a house in Baghdad's al-Qahera district at 0200 o'clock in the morning using bombs to force open the doors. "The Americans raided the house at night. They came by planes and they stripped them (men in the house) of their clothes before taking them away. Then they bombed the house. They used bombs to blow up the house. My brother was sleeping on the rooftop, the two (her brother and cousin) were sleeping on the rooftop. They (U.S. soldiers) went up and killed them. Where shall we go? We have come here two weeks ago," said Zainb Ibrahim, whose family had moved from Baghdad's western area of Ghazaliya and settled in Al-Qahera to flee sectarian violence in the area. She said that seven members of her family including her father were arrested in the raid. Police said that U.S. Humvees supported by helicopters raided the house after midnight, killing two members of the family and arresting others. Television footage showed a trail of fresh blood on the steps and floor of the roof. The U.S. military could not be reached for comment on the raid. Meanwhile, a previously unknown Iraqi group calling itself "The Cry of the Brigades" issued video footage showing rocket attacks on what it called the U.S. Embassy inside Green Zone in Baghdad. The undated video showed masked men dressed in Iraqi military uniform standing behind Katyoush rocket launcher with a masked man reading a statement from a paper, saying the attack was a show of support with the Lebanese people. The video also showed the firing of the rockets.

ITN Source | July 18, 2006

Tags:. .suicide. .religious. .dominant. .urged. .sunnis