BAGHDAD, Iraq – Car bombs shattered a crowded marketplace in the heart of Baghdad on Monday, triggering secondary explosions, engulfing an eight-story building in flames and killing at least 78 people in the latest in a series of similar attacks aimed at the country’s Shiite majority.
Nationwide, 133 people were killed or found dead in violence on Monday, according to police reports.
About 30 minutes before the attack on the market, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives vest in a crowd near a popular restaurant in the nearby Bab al-Sharqi area. Nine people were killed and 19 wounded.
The marketplace blasts in three parked cars obliterated shops and stalls and left bodies scattered among mannequins and other debris in pools of blood. Dense smoke blackened the area and rose hundreds of feet from the market district on the east bank of the Tigris river. Small fires, fueled by clothing and other goods, burned for hours in the rubble-strewn street as firefighters battled blazes in two buildings.
Besides the nearly 80 people dead, 166 were wounded. Many shopkeepers were caught in the second blast as they ran into the street to see what had happened after the first bombing.
The attack appeared timed to coincide with the first anniversary – on the Muslim lunar calendar – of the bombing of a Shiite shrine in the town of Samarra, an al-Qaida provocation that unleashed the torrent of sectarian bloodletting that has gripped Baghdad for months.
A 15-minute period of commemoration in the capital marking the February 2006 attack on the al-Askariya shrine – also known as the Golden Mosque – had just ended when attack on the market took place.
The sound of two of the blasts was caught on tape as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was delivering a speech live on television from the Cabinet building in the heavily fortified Green Zone at the end of the commemoration.
The Shiite prime minister didn’t flinch – though his bodyguards did – as he called for unity and said he was optimistic about the U.S.-Iraqi security sweep that officials said will gain momentum this week.
The Interior Ministry spokesman said three suspects were arrested – an Iraqi and two foreigners.
Also Monday. an Iraqi court changed the sentence for Saddam Hussein’s vice president from life imprisonment to death by hanging for his role in the killing of Shiites in Dujail in 1982. The decision on Taha Yassin Ramadan had been expected.
Hussein, his half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, already have been sent to the gallows for the killings.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
