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Baghdad triple strike kills 33, wounds 79
Two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad on Monday and a suicide bomber blew himself up among police and civilians who rushed to help the wounded, a triple strike that killed 28 people and wounded 68. In another attack, in Baquba, capital of volatile northern Diyala province, a female suicide bomber killed five U.S.-backed security patrolmen and wounded 11 other people, the U.S. military said.
The triple attack in Baghdad, one of the deadliest incidents in Iraq for months, took place in the Kasra neighborhood on the east bank of the Tigris River in a bustling area of tea shops and restaurants near a fine arts institute. Male and female students, many of whom were having breakfast at the time of the strike, were among the dead and wounded, as were Iraqi soldiers and police who had rushed to the scene. Such coordinated and massive strikes have become rare but steady reminders of the capacity of militants to unleash mayhem in Iraq, even though they no longer control whole swathes of towns and villages and violence overall has fallen sharply. The attack by a female suicide bomber in Baquba is part of a trend that has increased this year. U.S. forces say al-Qaeda Sunni Islamist militants are increasingly recruiting female bombers -- often teenage girls -- to thwart security checks. Many of the female bombers have lost male relatives and are seen as psychologically vulnerable to recruitment for suicide missions. Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups have been driven out of many parts of Iraq after local Sunni Arab tribesmen turned against them, but they are making a stand in northern areas such as the rural groves near Baquba. They often target the mainly Sunni U.S.-backed security patrols, whom they call collaborators. Posted by: Fred 2008-11-11 |
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