29 killed in wave of bombings at Iraq mosques
BAGHDAD — A wave of bombs targeting Shiite Muslim worshippers at mosques across Baghdad killed 29 people and wounded more than 136 on Friday a month after US troops withdrew from Iraq's main urban centres.
Security officials said the six apparently coordinated blasts, which were condemned by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, occurred outside mosques and prayer centres in and around the capital, including one frequented by followers of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The most devastating attack was in the northeastern district of Al-Shaab, where a car bombing killed 23 people and wounded 107 others, an interior ministry official said.
The mosque itself is occupied by Iraqi special forces, and before the bomb exploded worshippers, many of them loyal to Sadr, were praying between the building itself and the parking lot.
Witnesses said worshippers had told local police of their suspicions regarding a 1980s Volkswagen Passat, but they were assured the vehicle was safe.
The bomb exploded a short while later, with witnesses saying local police then panicked and began firing their guns randomly, inadvertently killing three of the 23 who died.
In the aftermath of the attack, local residents shouted verbal abuse at police, saying officers in the area had not done their job, and later demanded that security forces leave.
"We lay responsibility with the Iraqi government, because it is supposed to protect Iraqis," Sheikh Salah Obaidi, a spokesman for the Sadrist movement in Iraq's holy Shiite city of Najaf, told AFP.
"The government's intelligence efforts are not up to the mark."
Meanwhile, in twin bombings at Al-Rasoul Al-Adham mosque at Diyala bridge, 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Baghdad, five people were killed and 15 wounded as they left Friday prayers, an interior ministry official said.
An attack in Zafaraniyah left one dead and six injured, while separate bombings in Kamaliyah and Al-Elam wounded four people each.
"The Secretary General condemns in the strongest terms the bomb attacks on five Shiite mosques in Baghdad today which have left dozens dead and wounded," Ban's press office said in a statement.
"Attacks against places of worship cannot be justified by any political or religious cause. These attacks appear to be aimed at provoking sectarian strife and undermining stability in Iraq."
US ambassador to Baghdad Christopher Hill and the top US commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, added in a joint statement that Friday's bombings were "barbaric attacks against innocent people at their places of worship... (and) criminal acts of terrorism against the Iraqi people."
In a separate incident in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, two people were killed and 12 others were wounded by a car bomb in a popular market in a Kurdish district of the ethnically mixed city.
Friday's violence was the worst to hit Iraq since a double suicide attack in the northern town of Tal Afar on July 9 killed 35 people and wounded 61.
Attacks in the capital over the past two months have mostly targeted the majority Shiite community, prompting fears that Al-Qaeda is trying to reignite the sectarian violence that swept the country in 2006 and 2007, killing tens of thousands.
Violence has dropped markedly throughout Iraq in recent months, but attacks increased in the run-up to the US military pullback a month ago from urban centres, with 437 Iraqis killed in June -- the highest death toll in 11 months.
On Thursday 11 people were killed in two separate bombings, one at a political party's offices in Baquba, north of Baghdad. The other targeted a police station near the Iraq-Syria border.
The same day, a senior US commander warned that security forces would have to be watchful of violence targeting parties and politicians in the run-up to general elections next January.
"Leading up to the elections, we're also going to see some politically motivated violence," Colonel Tobin Green, commander of the US army's 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, told reporters in Baghdad.
Comments