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Baghdad bomb kills 16 people Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://afr.com/articles/2004/06/15/1087244883490.htmlhttp://afr.com/articles/2004/06/15/1087244883490.html
Baghdad bomb kills 16, wounds 60
Jun 15 07:02
AFP
A powerful car bomb killed at least 16 people, including five foreign contractors, and wounded more than 60 when it ripped through a busy Baghdad street in a targeted attack on a convoy.
The second major blast in the capital in 24 hours gouged a huge crater in the road and brought down part of a building, destroying a row of shops, in packed Sadoun Street on the east bank of the Tigris river.
At least seven Iraqis died in a suicide car bomb near a US-led coalition base in Baghdad on Sunday.
US and Iraqi officials have warned of an upsurge in bloodshed ahead of the June 30 handover of sovereignty in Iraq by the US-led coalition, now barely two weeks away.
So far this month, at least 145 people have died in violence in the country.
The US military said five foreign security contractors, including two British, one French and one American, died in the latest car bomb, which targeted three four-wheel-drive vehicles typically used by the coalition.
A diplomatic source identified the fifth foreign victim as a Filipino.
"Their bodies have been taken to a morgue at Baghdad airport," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity, adding that the five contractors had been working for a security firm hired by the US company General Electric.
Three foreigners were wounded, said the new Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi, adding that they had been helping to rebuild Iraq's patchy electricity sector.
A tally by three other local hospitals counted at least 11 Iraqis killed in the attack and 56 people injured, including one Nigerian, one Sudanese and three Iraqi women.
An AFP photographer saw a charred corpse in a burnt vehicle and four bodies covered in sheets at the site of the blast near restaurants, shops and houses.
The convoy, two tan Mitsubishis and a GMC, was heading down the road, not far from the main headquarters of the US-led coalition across the river, when the explosion struck at 8:15 am local time.
Major Mohammed Saleh, the senior policeman at the scene, said: "It was a three-car American convoy. A suicide car bomber in a small Volkswagen Brasilia drove between the cars and blew himself up."
Other witnesses said they thought a parked car was detonated by remote control as the convoy sped by, but there was no independent confirmation.
An angry mob quickly crowded around the two other vehicles that stood charred but intact on the road. Chanting "No, no, America! No, no, Governing Council," the Iraqis hit the vehicles with sticks and threw stones.
Police fired shots into the air but were unable to disperse the crowd who jumped onto the vehicles and then set fire to them. They threw alcohol from one of the wrecked shops into the flames.
People piled wounded on to the back of trucks and inside cars and rushed them to the hospital. Some medics bandaged wounded and bloodied Iraqis on the pavement. Wounded Iraqis leaned on rescuers as they left the damaged building.
Army helicopters buzzed overhead as ambulance sirens wailed. Later, four tanks and at least 20 US Humvees rumbled up to the site and soldiers equipped with riot shields sealed off the area.
Since the new Iraqi caretaker government was unveiled on June 1, there has been a wave of car bombings, assassinations of officials and kidnappings.
Some 30 minutes after the Sadoun Street blast, a civilian contractor was killed in an ambush on a coalition convoy in eastern Baghdad, while the Turkish embassy here said it was searching for two Turks feared taken hostage.
And over the weekend five Kurdish recruits to the new Iraqi army were killed and their bodies burnt after their car broke down north of the capital.
At a news conference, Allawi pledged a united front to defeat the insurgents.
"We will take decisive and strong positions to protect the honour, money and lives of Iraqis," he said.
Amid the rumbling violence, buses carrying more than 400 freed prisoners left Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, as the coalition announced upcoming pre-trial hearings for three US soldiers charged with abusing inmates at the jail.
In Britain, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith said the British military would court martial four soldiers for allegedly beating and sexually abusing prisoners in Iraq.
Meanwhile, British Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon began a surprise 24-hour trip to the southern city of Basra, where most of Britain's 8,530 troops in Iraq are deployed.
And the International Committee of the Red Cross said ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein must be freed or charged before the end-June handover.
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