Dozens of suspected insurgents attacked a small town near Baghdad at dusk on Thursday and killed at least 25 people and possibly many more, police and a local politician said yesterday. Police recovered 21 bodies, mostly of Shia migrant workers, from a brick factory at Nahrawan, municipal council leader Alaa Abdul Sahab Al Lamy told Reuters. A further four were brought from the local power station, he added.It was one of the bloodiest incidents after 10 days of sectarian violence that have pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war following the bombing of a Shia shrine on February 22. Police and Interior Ministry sources in Baghdad said they could not confirm a total death toll but said nine guards at the power station were killed along with “many” factory workers. “This was a sectarian attack,” Lamy said, adding that police feared further bodies might still be found at the brick plant. “We understand there are bodies everywhere around the factory, in the fields,” one Interior Ministry official in Baghdad said. “The police cannot retrieve them all because they are afraid to venture in without more military protection.”
More than 50 gunmen, believed to be insurgents allied to Al Qaeda and based in Diyala province, entered the town between 5pm and 6pm, several police sources said. They attacked and destroyed the local power plant, killing nine people, before US and Iraqi army units responded. As the gunmen withdrew, they entered the brick factory and began killing people working there.
| Sounds like a slip-up in the response. |
Lamy said that of the 21 people whose bodies had been recovered from the factory and brought to the police station in Nahrawan, one was a woman and three were children, including a girl aged about six. Many of the dead had a single bullet wound to the forehead. Many brick factories in the area, where Sunni insurgents have been very active, employ Shia workers from southern Iraq.