In Zafraniyah, massive slabs of concrete, which once were ceilings of a
multistory apartment, lay atop each other in a collapsed heap as residents
lifted blocks of rubble to look for people and belongings.
A middle-aged man in a bloodstained dishdasha, the traditional Arab robe,
wandered aimlessly, hitting his face with his hands in grief. Residents said his
six children were crushed to death when his house collapsed.
"This is terrorism against the whole nation," said Ali al-Sayedi, a municipal
council member.
A pedestrian bridge, ripped off its mooring at one end, had crushed a car
underneath. One rocket had punched a hole in the roof of a house exposing the
steel rod reinforcements inside. Store fronts were blasted inward, blowing away
metal shutters.
The attack in Zafraniyah was the deadliest since about 12,000 US and Iraqi
troop reinforcements were sent to the capital this month to curb a surge in
sectarian violence that the
United Nations has estimated killed nearly
6,000 Iraqis in May and June.
The complex style of the assault was similar to a July 27 attack of mortars,
rockets and car bombs on another mostly Shiite district, Karradah, which killed
31 people. Police said the missiles that struck Karradah also were fired from
Dora.
The multiple attacks were part of the grisly pattern of Sunni-Shiite violence
that American officials consider the greatest threat to Iraq's stability more
than three years after the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's regime.
On Sunday, US and Iraqi soldiers began searching more than 4,000 homes in the
Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in Baghdad while conducting a similar operation
simultaneously in the Shiite district of Shula, the US command said.
"The operations are designed to reduce the level of murders, kidnappings,
assassinations, terrorism and sectarian violence in northwest Baghdad and to
reinforce the Iraqi government's control," a statement by the U.S. command said.
Elsewhere, unidentified gunmen killed Col. Mahjoub Khalaf Ghulam, a commander
in the Iraqi oil protection force, in Tikrit, about 80 miles north of Baghdad,
police said. More than 250 Oil Ministry officials, workers and oil security
personnel have been assassinated since the fall of Saddam.
Also Sunday, a bomb blew up in a Shiite shrine near the northern city of
Baqouba but there were no casualties. However, six people were killed in
shootings and bombings on Monday across Iraq, including three blacksmiths who
were shot to death by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul.
