A Plague on the Nation

Iraqis walk past the site of a car bomb explosion in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, Iraq. KARIM KADIM: AP

Nov. 23, 2006, 11:50AM
Attack on Baghdad Shiite slum kills 150

By THOMAS WAGNER Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Three suicide car bombs and two mortar rounds struck the capital's Shiite Sadr City slum Thursday, killing at least 150 people and wounding 238, police said. The attack by suspected Sunni Arab militants was the deadliest in the sectarian bloodshed that has engulfed Iraq since last winter.

Shiites responded almost immediately, firing 10 mortar rounds at the Sunnis' holiest shrine in Baghdad, the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Azamiya neighborhood, killing one person and wounding 14.

Fighting also flared in another part of Baghdad when 30 Sunni insurgents armed with machine guns and mortars attacked the Shiite-controlled Health Ministry. The attackers were repulsed after a three-hour battle, during which Iraqi soldiers and U.S. military helicopters intervened. At least seven guards of the ministry were wounded, police 1st Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq said.

The government ordered a curfew on Baghdad beginning at 8 p.m. Thursday, saying all people and vehicles must stay off the streets of the city until further notice.

Top officials held an emergency meeting at the home of Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim apparently to discuss deteriorating security. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni; and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad attended, an aide to al-Hakim said.

Sectarian attacks and revenge killings have escalated since a bomb wrecked a Shiite shrine in Samarra last February.

Beginning at 3:10 p.m., three car bombers blew up their vehicles one after another at 15 minute intervals in Sadr City, hitting the Jamila market, al-Hay market and al-Shahidein Square. At about the same time, two mortar rounds exploded at al-Shahidein Square and Mudhaffar Square, police said.

Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, told state-run Iraqiyah television that another would-be car bomber was captured and three other failed bombers were on the run. He gave the license plate numbers of each car, asking people to inform police if they saw them.

As the three fiery explosions sent huge plumes of black smoke over northeastern Baghdad and left streets covered with burning bodies and blood, angry residents and armed Shiite militiamen flooded the streets, hurling curses at Sunni Muslims and firing weapons into the air.

Sadr City is the home of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Ambulances raced to burning wooden fruit and vegetables stalls in Jamila market to rescue dozens of wounded. Rescue crews also removed burned bodies from mangled cars and minibuses and took them away on wheeled carts, but many corpses of adults and children remained in the streets.

Shortly after the attack, Mahdi Army militiamen deployed around the area, setting up checkpoints and roadblocks to keep all strangers away.

Police Col. Hassan Chaloub said at least 150 people were killed and 238 wounded in Sadr City.

The coordinated attack was the deadliest assault on a single Iraqi area since the U.S.-led war began in March 2003. The worst previous was a bombing in the southern city of Hillah that targeted mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits in February 2004, killing 125 people and wounding more than 140.

There was a higher toll on March 2, 2004, but the attack occurred in two cities. Coordinated suicide bombings, mortar attacks and planted explosives struck Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing at least 181 Iraqis and wounding 573.

The fighting at the Health Ministry in northwest Baghdad began about noon, with heavy gunfire between 30 suspected Sunni insurgents and the building's guards, security officials said. Health Minister Ali al-Shemari is a follower of al-Sadr.

Iraqi troops rushed to the area and all roads leading to the ministry in the Bab al-Muadham neighborhood were closed, the security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

Police Lt. Ali Muhsin said the attack began at 12:15 p.m. when three mortar shells hit the building, causing damage. After that, gunmen on the upper floors of surrounding buildings opened fire, he said.

Ministry workers were briefly trapped in the building.

"The gunmen fled as American helicopters and Iraqi armored vehicles arrived. Employees were able to leave starting about 3:15 p.m.," Health ministry spokesman Qassim Yehyah said.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. and Iraqi forces searching for a kidnapped American soldier swept through an area of Sadr City, killing four Iraqis, wounding eight and detaining five, police said. The raid was the fourth in six days in which coalition forces have raided the district.

The militia is suspected of kidnapping U.S. soldier Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old Ann Arbor, Mich., resident as he was visiting his Iraqi wife in Baghdad on Oct. 23.

The Mahdi Army also is suspected of kidnapping dozens of people during the raid on a Ministry of Higher Education office in Baghdad on Nov. 14. The ministry is predominantly Sunni Arab.

In the raid on Sadr City at about 4:30 a.m., coalition troops searched houses and opened fire on a minivan carrying Iraqi workers in the al-Fallah Street area, killing four of them and wounding eight, police Capt. Mohammed Ismail said. He said the troops also detained five Iraqis.

In a statement, the U.S. military confirmed the raid and said it was conducted in the effort to find al-Taayie. It confirmed the detention of five Iraqis and said a vehicle was shot at by Iraqi troops after "displaying hostile intent." The statement did not report Iraqi casualties.

The U.S. military also issued a statement Thursday reporting three Marines were killed while fighting in Anbar province, where many Sunni Arab insurgents are based.

So far this month, 52 American military personnel have been killed or died.

By Robin Stringer

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Four car bombs in Baghdad followed by mortar fire killed at least 143 people and wounded 225, President Jalal Talabani's political party said, in one of the bloodiest attacks since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Today's blasts hit locations in Sadr City, the impoverished Shiite Muslim district in the east of the Iraqi capital, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said on its Arabic-language Web site. The toll is expected to rise, the PUK said. The series of blasts may be the second-deadliest coordinated attack since March 2, 2004, when Shiite worshippers in Karbala and Baghdad were targeted in bombings that killed more than 180 people.

The Interior Ministry imposed an indefinite curfew in the city that began at 8 p.m. local time in response to the afternoon bombings, the PUK said. A leading Sunni Muslim organization in Baghdad was hit by eight mortar rounds in retaliation for today's blasts, the Associated Press said.

Baghdad is the center of sectarian violence between Iraq's majority Shiites, who were oppressed by ousted leader Saddam Hussein, and the Sunni minority who dominated his regime. The Shiites control most of the seats in the Iraqi government. Some 3,709 civilians were killed last month, the United Nations said yesterday in a report, most of them in sectarian attacks.

Al-Sadr

Sadr City is a bastion of support for Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army. Sunni lawmakers accuse the militia of forming sectarian death squads. A bomb at a busy Sadr City market Oct. 30 killed at least 25 people and injured 60.

The attacks were masterminded by ``the occupation, Saddam supporters and the infidels,'' Abdul Hadi al-Darraji, spokesman for al-Sadr's political movement, said in a telephone interview from Baghdad aired on al-Jazeera television. The attacks came six days before U.S. President George W. Bush is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan for talks on how to stabilize Iraq.

Earlier today the Health Ministry, which is controlled by al-Sadr's political movement, was besieged by at least 30 gunmen, AFP reported. The attack in Baghdad came days after Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili survived an assassination attempt in which two of his bodyguards were killed.

On Sept. 14, 2005, at least 100 people were killed across Baghdad when 10 car bombs detonated around the capital. A car bombing killed at least 110 people in Hilla, a predominantly Shiite city south of Baghdad, on Feb. 28, 2005. In Arbil, the capital of the northern Kurdish autonomous region of the country, at least 100 people were killed when two suicide bombers targeted the headquarters of the region's two main political parties.

Missing Soldier

The U.S. military has carried out several raids in Sadr City to search for a U.S. soldier of Iraqi origin who went missing on Oct. 23.

In the latest raid, aimed at ``a kidnapping and murder-cell leader reported to have knowledge of the missing soldier,'' Iraqi special forces engaged a vehicle ``displaying hostile intent,'' the U.S. military said in an e-mailed statement. Agence France- Presse, citing local witnesses and Iraqi security officials, said the U.S. forces fired on a minibus transporting laborers, killing four people and wounding eight.

To contact the reporter on this story: Robin Stringer in London at rstringer@bloomberg.net