IRAQ: Car bomb leaves more than 30 dead and a trail of destruction in a poor Shi'ite area of the Iraqi capital

Record ID: 356991

  • Title: IRAQ: Car bomb leaves more than 30 dead and a trail of destruction in a poor Shi'ite area of the Iraqi capital
  • Date: 22nd May 2009
  • Summary: Al-SHULA, BAGHDAD, IRAQ (MAY 21, 2009) (REUTERS) DAMAGED BUILDING AT BLAST SCENE / PAN TO DAMAGED BUILDING AND HEAP OF TWISTED METAL AT FOOT OF BUILDING HEAPS OF RUBBLE OF TWISTED METAL NEAR BLACKENED SHOPS
  • Embargoed: 6th June 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVACW03DBNIN8PM2OCKL1G2WNWR0
  • Story Text: Iraqi police said 35 people were killed and 72 were left wounded after a parked car bomb near a popular restaurant ripped through the poor mostly Shi'ite district of Shula in northwest Baghdad on Wednesday (May 20).
    The U.S. military put the number of dead at 13 and the director of a hospital in the Baghdad district in which Shula lies said 26 were killed and 38 wounded, adding that women and children were among those caught in the blast.
    Reuters television footage showed a partly damaged building and a number of damaged shops with rubble of twisted metal scattered all over the scene of blast.
    "We were sitting when suddenly there was a blast force and dust filled the area and we could not see anything," said a shop owner in the area who was wounded in the blast.
    Shula was also targeted by bombers on Decemer 25 last year, killing four people.
    Al Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist groups consider Shi'ites heretics, and have long targeted Shi'ite areas and festivals in Iraq. The bombing of the Shi'ite Askari shrine in 2006 unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodletting that subsided only last year.
    Security has broadly improved since the height of the sectarian violence, but a rash of bombings in April made it the deadliest month for civilians since November.
    The last large-scale bomb attack in Iraq was on April 29, when 51 people were killed in twin car bomb attacks in the Shi'ite Sadr City district of Baghdad.
    The recent attacks raise questions about whether Iraq can avoid sliding back into greater bloodshed as an untested military prepares to take greater security responsibility and U.S. troops prepare for a full withdrawal by the end of 2011.
    Iraqi security forces on Monday aired a video tape of a what they said was the captured leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaeda-linked organisation blamed for years of bloodshed in the country, but the group has denied the claim.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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