IRAQ: Car bomb in eastern Baghdad wounds 6 civilians while gunmen kill three Shi'ite militiamen north of Baghdad

Record ID: 357835

  • Title: IRAQ: Car bomb in eastern Baghdad wounds 6 civilians while gunmen kill three Shi'ite militiamen north of Baghdad
  • Date: 8th March 2006
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE)(Arabic), MEMBER OF MEHDI ARMY, SAYING: "Members of the Mehdi Army were at the the martyr (Al- Sadr) office and they were shot and killed when they left the office"
  • Embargoed: 23rd March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVAAWRELM753C13SOFSFGPQZQH0B
  • Story Text: A car bomb in the Eastern neighbourhood of Sadr City, a poor, Shiite area in Baghdad, wounded six civilians on Tuesday (March 7, 2006), police said. They said that the car bomb was targeting a passing patrol of Iraqi army in Al-Hamza square of the city. The patrol escaped the blast unscathed. However, residents of the neighbourhood said there were no army patrol when the blast occurred.
    "I was at my home when I heard a powerful blast that shocked the whole area. We went outside and we saw the car wreckage here. There were no police, no army and no Americans. It is a residential area, there are shops, a restaurant and residential houses.", said one resident. The sprawling Shi'ite slum is a stronghold of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has reached across Iraq's sectarian divide and called for Sunni and Shi'ite solidarity in fighting U.S. occupation.
    Meanwhile, a funeral was held on Wednesday (March 8) for three members of the shi'ite militiamen of Mehdi army who were shot dead north of the capital on Tuesday. Mourners chanted "There is no God but Allah", as they walked behind vehicles carrying the flag-draped coffins. Sources at the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said that gunmen opened fire on the three militiamen as they were leaving Al-Sadr office in the city, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of the capital.
    "Members of the Mehdi Army were at the the martyr (Al- Sadr) office and they were shot and killed when they left the office," said one member of the army.
    The militia that kept order in the Shi'ite neighbourhood of Sadr City was the same force accused of going on a rampage of reprisal attacks against Sunni Muslim mosques and clerics after the February 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra Since bombs destroyed the Shi'ite shrine, at least 450 people have been killed in sectarian violence, according to even the most cautious estimates from officials playing down the crisis.
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