BAGHDAD, Iraq - A series of bombs exploded in rapid succession in a shopping
district in a mainly Christian neighborhood of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing 16
people and wounding 87, police said.
Scattered attacks around Iraq killed five other people, and the U.S. military
announced the death of two soldiers — raising the toll of one of the deadliest
periods for American troops this year.
At least 17 troops have been killed in combat since Saturday, including eight
U.S. soldiers who died in gunbattles and bomb blasts Monday in Baghdad -
the most killed in a single day in the capital since July 2005.
An intensified U.S.-Iraqi military sweep launched in Baghdad in August has
been clearing neighborhoods house by house of weapons, militiamen and
insurgents.
Despite the sweep, the capital continues to see a deadly combination of
attacks by Sunni insurgents and tit-for-tat killings and bombings by Shiite
militias and Sunni groups, which have killed thousands this month.
Just before noon, a car bomb and two roadside bombs blew up within 10 minutes
in a shopping district of the Camp Sara neighborhood, which is predominantly
Christian, 1st Lt. Ali Abbas said.
The blasts left 16 dead and wounded 87, including shoppers and 15 policemen,
destroying cars and collapsing part of a nearby building, he said.
Bodies lay in the street next to the smoking wreckage of burning cars. Rescue
workers piled corpses into an ambulance parked next to the crumbled facade of a
building, while a policeman warned residents to leave the area for fear more
bombs would explode.
An increasingly common insurgent tactic is to detonate one bomb to draw
rescue workers and onlookers, then to explode a second device to cause mass
casualties.
One witness, who identified himself only by his first name, Hamdi, said a
roadside bomb went off first and people started to gather, then the second blast
went off.
"Then more people gathered and they were searching for their dead or missing
relatives when the car bomb exploded," he told AP Television News at the scene.
"Everybody knows this is a Christian neighborhood, they are neither Sunnis or
Shiites, so why are they doing this them?"
The military announced that one soldier was killed a day earlier in a
shooting in Baghdad, while a second died Tuesday from gunfire in the northern
city of Kirkuk.
Earlier in the nearby New Baghdad area, a bomb blast hit a convoy carrying
the Iraqi industry minister. Three police guards were killed and nine others
wounded, but the minister was not harmed, Abbas said.
Meanwhile, in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen attacked a
police patrol, killing two policemen and injuring eight people, including six
policemen, Diyala province police said.
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