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Death squads guns down civlians in market { July 18 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071701127.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071701127.html
Scores Killed in Bomb Attack Near Shiite Shrine
By Andy Mosher and Saad Sarhan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; 8:04 AM
BAGHDAD, July 18 -- A suicide car bomber beckoned a crowd of day laborers toward his explosive-packed minibus in the southern city of Kufa on Tuesday, then detonated a massive explosion that killed 53 people and wounded more than 100, police and health officials said.
The attack occurred at 7:15 a.m., when men seeking work were gathering outside the Kufa Mosque to await prospective employers.
Police said the bomber drove up in a Kia minivan, called out for anyone seeking work and waited for his vehicle to fill up with men. He promised to return for more and had begun to drive away when the bomb detonated, killing the driver, passengers and many in the large crowd that had gathered.
The bombing came one day after a military-style assault that killed at least 40 unarmed civilians in a crowded market area in the Shiite city of Mahmudiyah.
Mothers and their children were shot down Monday by masked attackers wielding machine guns and grenades during the 30-minute attack, as were seven mostly elderly men sitting in a cafe and drinking tea. Later, Sunni Arab insurgents asserted responsibility, saying the attack was in retaliation for the deaths of Sunnis in the country's increasing sectarian violence. Hundreds of people have been killed since July 9, when suspected Shiite gunmen carried out a daytime massacre of at least 40 residents in Baghdad's mostly Sunni neighborhood of al-Jihad.
In the bombing Tuesday morning, many of the dead and wounded were taken to hospitals in nearby Najaf when medical facilities in Kufa became filled beyond capacity, said Brig. Gen. Abbas Mouadal, the Najaf police commander.
The director of public health in Najaf, Munther al-Itari, put the total number of wounded at least 132.
Kufa, about 90 miles south of Baghdad, is a stronghold of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Police and witnesses said many of the victims of Tuesday's bombing were Sadr's followers.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who has offered a dialogue with some Sunni insurgent groups since he took office in April, pledged to "hunt down and punish" those responsible, the Reuters news agency reported.
In addition, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni Arab party, denounced the two latest attacks as a "horrible escalation of violence" and appealed to Iraqis "to come to their sense instead of slipping into the abyss," the Associated Press reported. The party urged political and religious leaders to meet to fnd ways "to get Iraq out of this dark tunnel."
Also Tuesday, a roadside bomb near a bus station in Hawijah, about 130 miles north of Baghdad, killed nine persons, including six police officers, according to Col. Abdul Fattah al-Jubouri, the Hawijah police chief.
In addition, an Iraqi official announced that security forces had killed a Jordanian man responsible for the deaths of two U.S. soldiers whose mutilated bodies were found last month, the AP reported. National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie identified Diyar Ismail Mahmoud, known as Abu al-Afghani, as the man who killed the two soldiers -- Pfc. Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker of Madras, Ore. -- but he would not say when or where Mahmoud died. The soldiers had been captured by insurgents after a clash southwest of Baghdad in Yusufiyah.
Sarhan reported from Najaf. Correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer and special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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