Forty killed in sectarian bomb attack on Iraqi Shia
Sunday September 24 2006
in BAGHDAD
A BOMB blew up a kerosene tanker truck in Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood yesterday, killing at least 40 people.
Meanwhile, authorities said Muntasir Hamoud Ileiwi al-Jubouri, a leader of Ansar al-Sunnah, a group linked to al-Qaeda by Iraqi and US forces, and two of his aides were arrested in Muqdadiyah, 90 kms northeast of Baghdad. Among other violent incidents across the country, police in Tikrit said gunmen had beheaded nine people, including some policemen, after dragging them out of two cars in a nearby town.
Three US soldiers were killed by two roadside bombs in Baghdad and near the violent northern oil city of Kirkuk and an American working for the State Department and died in attacks around the Shia southern city of Basra.
Elsewhere, an American soldier was killed in a roadside bomb attack in northern Baghdad.In another attack, a Danish soldier was killed and another injured by a roadside bomb in southern Iraq. He was the fourth Danish soldier to die in the conflict.
At least six other Danish troops were also wounded when a bomb blasted a vehicle carrying members of an air force unit assigned to protect Danish diplomats in southern Iraq.Al-Jubouri was arrested in Al-Taeyh, a village south of Muqdadiyah.Documents and assault rifles were seized with the three men, but no details were available.
The Sunni militant group has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide attacks, the August 2004 execution of 12 Nepalese hostages, and a December 2004 explosion at a US military mess hall in Mosul that killed 22 people. It is believed to have been an offshoot of another group, Ansar Al-Islam.
Ansar al-Sunna is part if the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organisation of insurgent groups that was co-founded by the late Jordanian-born terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In the Sadr City attack, another 40 people were wounded by the blast in the sprawling Shia slum. People frantically carried survivors from the narrow muddy street to ambulances, and hauled away bodies in blankets.
Dhiyaa Ali a 24-year-old college student, said he heard the explosion from his nearby home and ran to the street to help people. He said bodies and blood were everywhere.
"I went into the flames just to get anyone left out of the fire," he said. "I saw a mother holding her child, both of them burned and dead."
The bomb was hidden in a barrel near the tanker, where scores of people were waiting to buy fuel.A crowd of people was gathered behind the truck, with a long line down the street when the bomb exploded, Abdul-Sada said.
There were more people on hand than usual as families sought to stock up on fuel for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Sadr City is home to more than two million people and a stronghold of the Mahdi army - a Shia militia loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Baghdad has been a centre for sectarian violence, with both Sunni Arab and Shia death squads roaming the streets of the capital.
The attack came a day after a death squad gunned down four people in an assault on Sunni Arab homes.
