IRAQ: Suicide bomber kills 36 people and wounded 40 at a Shi'ite funeral and gunmen ambush a vital fuel convoy outside Baghdad amid a wave of attacks

Record ID: 355825

  • Title: IRAQ: Suicide bomber kills 36 people and wounded 40 at a Shi'ite funeral and gunmen ambush a vital fuel convoy outside Baghdad amid a wave of attacks
  • Date: 5th January 2006
  • Summary: PEOPLE CRYING NEAR A COVERED BODY OUTSIDE MIQDADIYA HOSPITAL VARIOUS OF BODIES COVERED BY BLANKETS OUTSIDE HOSPITAL AND PEOPLE STANDING NEARBY (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 20th January 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,War / Fighting
  • Reuters ID: LVA4XZMI4EIJWHPO12PUA5AK4CUM
  • Story Text: A suicide bomber killed 36 people and wounded 40 at a Shi'ite funeral and gunmen ambushed a vital fuel convoy outside Baghdad amid a wave of attacks that made Wednesday (January 4), Iraq's bloodiest day in weeks.
    Car bombs also went off in the capital and in the recently peaceful Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, suggesting a level of coordination that may be a response by Sunni Arab insurgents to last month's largely peaceful parliamentary election.
    The funeral attack was the bloodiest single incident since the election. Some Sunni groups had declared an informal truce to encourage their community to vote and have been disappointed to see results handing continued domination to the Shi'ite Islamists and Kurds who have been in power for the past year.
    The attack took place in Miqdadiya, 100 km (60 miles) northeast of the capital, where people were mourning a bodyguard to a local leader of the Dawa party, headed nationally by Shi'ite Islamist Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
    Assailants fired mortars on the mourners, forcing them to take cover in the cemetery. A bomber wearing an explosive vest then blew up among them, security officials said.
    Soon afterwards, gunmen ambushed a convoy of 60 fuel tankers north of Baghdad, destroying 20 of them and killing four people, police and oil officials said.
    An Oil Ministry spokesman denied the incident, saying only one tanker had been damaged by a roadside bomb, but police and oil industry sources stood by their accounts of a much larger attack.
    By nightfall, they said there were still isolated clashes on the road leading southwards from the country's main refinery at Baiji, and a driver and three members of the convoy's security team had been killed.
    A militant group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a statement on an Internet site generally used by insurgents to post claims.
    In a seperate attack at least eight people were killed and 12 wounded in a car bomb was detonated in southern Baghdad, police and hospital sources said.
    The car was parked close to a busy commercial market in the Doura district, they said.
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