- Title: IRAQ: Multiple car bombs in Baghdad kill 15
- Date: 15th April 2007
- Summary: POLICE NEAR SMOULDERING SMOULDERING CIVILIAN CAR
- Embargoed: 30th April 2007 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Iraq
- Country: Iraq
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
- Reuters ID: LVA2UCQ34H0VUWJFNYH1J4DJELN3
- Story Text: Violence escalated in Baghdad on Sunday with up to 21 people killed and about 60 wounded in multiple bomb attacks in two Shi'ite districts of the Iraqi capital. Baghdad's Karrada neighbourhood was a scene of chaos on Sunday (April 15) following the explosion of a small bus parked near an Iraqi police station.
Five people were killed and ten were wounded in yet another violent day in Baghdad.
Joining the police and firefighters at the scene was Mithal al-Alussi, a member of Iraq's parliament who appealed for unity amid the chaos.
"We have to stay together, we have to build our block together. Otherwise no country in this Middle East or in the international committee can deal with the terrorists alone. We need the international help, right. This is really correct but also we are facing here the terrorists," al-Alussi said.
Just hours earlier, a bomb which had been placed inside the bus killed three people and wounded 11 when it exploded.
The wreckage of the bus stood on the side of the street as a handful of residents and policemen gathered in the Shi'ite district of al-Kadhimiya in northwestern Baghdad.
"It (the vehicle) was driving from this side and then it exploded, after the explosion it veered to the side of the road. We found three to four (bodies) and one wounded man, they (policemen) were trying to pull him out of the vehicle but they could not... He was bleeding," said one man who claims to have witnessed what happened.
And in southwestern Baghdad, two car bombs killed 15 people and wounded 50 when they exploded in quick succession.
The first of the two car bombs exploded at a market at the mostly Shi'ite al-Shurta al-Rabeia neighbourhood, while the second one went off seconds later at a nearby intersection, police said.
Police said mortar rounds also landed in the area , in an apparent coordinated attack.
Shards of twisted metal littered the market, television footage showed. Several cars were damaged in the explosion.
"We were having breakfast when a car bomb blew up here and another one blew up in the market. We rushed to evacuate the wounded and the dead," said one resident.
A two-month-old, U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad seen as the last-ditch attempt to avoid Iraq from sliding into all-out civil war has reduced the number of targeted killings.
But U.S. and Iraqi commanders still find car and suicide bombers hard to stop.
Sectarian tensions between majority Shi'ites and once dominant Sunni Arabs remain high after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the town of Samarra in February 2006 unleashed a wave of violence. Tens of thousands have been killed since then. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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