BAGHDAD, Iraq – Car bombs and a rocket barrage struck a crowded, predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad on Sunday evening, killing at least 62 people and wounding at least 140, a municipal official said.
Two car bombs and a barrage of an estimated nine rockets on the Zafraniyah neighborhood in southern Baghdad heavily damaged three buildings, including a multistory apartment house that collapsed, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Saddoun Abu al-Ula said.
He said the rockets appeared to have been fired from Dora, one of the mostly Sunni districts targeted by U.S. troops in a new security crackdown against sectarian violence in the capital.
Muhanna Yassin, who lives in Zafraniyah, said the attack left the neighborhood “a total mess” with “bodies of the dead and injured scattered around in the streets – old, young, women and children.”
“The ground shook underneath us and there was chaos everywhere,” he said. “Everyone was dazed and confused, looking for their families. Some children and grown-ups were crying. I can’t even begin describing their state.”
He said many of the victims were cut by flying glass and debris, leaving parts of the streets soaked in blood.
Also Sunday, hundreds of newly recruited police officers in Fallujah failed to show up for work after insurgents disseminated pamphlets threatening officers who stayed on the job, according to police officials.
“We will kill all the policemen infidels,” read the pamphlets, “whether or not they quit or are still in their jobs.”
Fallujah Police Lt. Mohammed Alwan said that the force, which he estimated had increased to more than 2,000, has now shrunk to only 100. Alwan said that insurgents have killed dozens of policemen in their homes and also attacked family members in a weekslong intimidation campaign.
A Fallujah police major, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, said that at least 1,400 policemen had left their jobs since Friday and that more than 100 police officers have been killed in Fallujah.
Marine Lt. Lawton King, who is stationed in Fallujah, called those figures “inaccurate and grossly exaggerated,” saying that only 32 police officers had been assassinated since January and that “substantially fewer than the exaggerated 1,400” officers had failed to report for work.
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