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43 killed in baghdad bus station bombings { August 17 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/17/AR2005081700224.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/17/AR2005081700224.html
At Least 43 Killed in Baghdad Bombings
Series of Back-to-Back Attacks Mark Bloodiest Day in Weeks
By Khalid Alsaffar and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 17, 2005; 7:51 AM
BAGHDAD, Aug. 17 -- Three back-to-back bombings hit near a Baghdad bus station Wednesday and then at the hospital where rescuers rushed the victims, killing at least 43 people and wounding nearly 90, authorities said.
Six Iraqi security-force members and one American soldier also died in what was one of the bloodiest days in weeks in Baghdad.
Bodies of the bombing victims collected in pools of blood in the grounds outside the emergency room of the targeted hospital after medical teams ran out of room for the dead inside.
Rescuers also ran out of cloth to cover the dead, and resorted to splitting open cardboard boxes to cover the faces and corpses.
"This is the most cowardly attack anywhere,'' said Kassim Abdul Hadi, 47, a teacher who was traveling by bus Wednesday into Baghdad. He spoke at the hospital where he was being treated for wounds to the leg and abdomen. "Do they call this holy war, killing civilians in a bus terminal? They are simply criminals."
Witnesses said the bombs went off in the space of a half-hour Wednesday morning. The first bomb, a car bomb with a suicide driver at the wheel, went off outside a police station across the street from the bus terminal, witnesses said.
Ten minutes later, another suicide attacker drove his car into the open-air bus terminal and blew it up.
The bus terminal, east Baghdad's main bus garage, takes travelers to and from southern cities of Iraq. Most of the deaths occurred there, Iraqi army captain Ibaa Abdul Hakim said.
As policemen and bystanders scrambled to take the dead and wounded to the Kindi hospital, only 200 meters away, a third car loaded with explosives detonated along the curb near the side entrance to the hospital, Hakim said.
The dead there included wounded from the site of the first two bombings.
"This was a well concerted, triple bomb attack," Hakim said.
Police cordoned off the area and would not let cars pass by, except those carrying the coffins of the dead.
At least half a dozen cars were seen carrying coffins of the dead, with family members of the victims inside the cars in tears.
One woman a resident of Sadr city, who gave her name as Um Karim said: "I was lucky this time too. When the third explosion occurred, I was in the bus on the main street. We were all shaken. But how can we stop these attacks. We have a saying in Arabic that says 'its hard to catch the thief if he was a member of the family'. That's our predicament,," she said.
"Those who are doing these attacks are from amongst us, and its hard to catch them."
Inside the hospital's emergency ward, Ahmad Zamel, 36, a driver who runs his Chevrolet as a passenger shuttle between Baghdad and Kut, south of Baghdad, was injured in the second blast inside the terminal, hit with shrapnel in the chest and the upper arm.
"I was waiting to get two more passengers to go to Kut when this explosion occurred," he said. "I found myself bleeding and my car damaged. Why would anyone detonate his car here? Are they trying to kill passengers, but for what purpose? Only because most of the ones traveling south are Shiites?"
Separately Wednesday, an ambush by gunmen killed six newly graduated military recruits, all cousins, near Kirkuk, authorities said.
In addition, the U.S. military reported an American soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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