At least 26 Iraqis, almost all of them children, have been killed by a suicide car bombing in south-eastern Baghdad.
A US soldier is also said to have died in the blast. Another three US soldiers are reported to have been injured.
A car drove up to a US army vehicle and blew up as troops gave sweets to the children, a witness said.
Hundreds of Iraqis have died in attacks by militants opposed to the US presence and a Shia-led government that took charge in Baghdad earlier this year.
'Pools of blood'
"Many Iraqi civilians, mostly children, were around the Humvee at the time of the blast," US military spokesman Sgt David Abrams told the Reuters news agency.
Another witness told the AFP news agency: "Children gathered round the Americans who were handing out sweets.
"Suddenly a suicide car bomber drove round from a side street and blew himself up," he said.
A television cameraman working for the Reuters agency said nearby houses had been demolished by the explosion and pools of blood collected in the street.
The blast is said to have taken place as the US patrol was passing through Baghdad's eastern al-Jedidah district which is populated mainly be Shia Muslims.
Shocked relatives
At the nearby Kindi hospital, correspondents say hundreds of distraught relatives wandered along the blood-soaked corridors shouting and screaming as they looked for their children, many of whom were badly mutilated.
An official said the bodies of 24 children had been delivered to the mortuary.
Abu Hamed, who lost his 12-year-old son in the blast, told the AFP news agency he was at home when he heard the explosion.
"I rushed outside to find my son. I only found his bicycle," he said.
He said he found his son at the Kindi hospital mortuary.
"I recognised him from his head. The rest of the body was completely burnt."
The area of eastern Baghdad where the blast took place has a mixed community of Sunnis, Shia and Christians, BBC correspondent Richard Galpin reports.
A bomb blast in Baghdad in September last year killed at least 34 children.
This attack also saw the victims gather round US troops who were handing out sweets, to mark the opening of a water treatment plant.
First, my heart goes out to the family of those children and that soldier who died in this attack.
It is interesting how the various news sources report the same news, isn't it? I was just curious, and found an article at Fox News and this is what it stated. Same essential news but with a different flavor.
***********
Bomber Kills Dozens in Iraq, Including GI, Kids
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq — A car bomber sped up to American soldiers distributing candy to children and detonated his explosives Wednesday, killing up to 27 other people, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. One U.S. soldier and about a dozen children were among the dead.
At least 70 others, including three U.S. soldiers, were injured in the attack, Iraqi and U.S. officials said. It was the second major homicide bombing in Baghdad this week. A bomber killed 25 people Sunday at an army recruiting center.
The fireball from Wednesday's blast also set a nearby house ablaze, the U.S. military said. The attack stunned the impoverished east Baghdad neighborhood of mostly Shiite Muslims and Christians.
At Kindi hospital, where many of the dead and injured were taken, one distraught woman swathed in black sat cross-legged outside the operating room. "May God curse the mujahedeen and their leader," she cried as she pounded her own head in grief.
Hospitals and police said between 11 and 13 children were killed. Authorities scrambled to compile a count of the dead and injured.
"The explosion was mainly on the children," resident Abbas Ali Jassim said.
A U.S. soldier assigned to Task Force Baghdad also was killed, the military said. At least 1,759 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.
The vehicle used in the attack was a brown Toyota Land Cruiser with a license plate from the southern city of Basra, police said.
In a separate attack Wednesday, a roadside bomb exploded near an American patrol in eastern Baghdad, killing a 7-year-old child and seriously wounding a woman, police said.
In September, 35 Iraqi children were killed in a string of bombs that exploded as American troops were handing out candy at a government-sponsored celebration to inaugurate a sewage plant in west Baghdad. It was the largest death toll of children in any insurgent attack since the start of the Iraq conflict.
However, many of the families of children killed in September blamed the Americans because their presence attracted insurgents to the ceremony.
Following Wednesday's bombing, charred remains of an engine block wrapped in barbed wire sat in the road. A child's bicycle was crumpled beside the street, which was splattered with pools of blood.
An elderly woman dressed in traditional black beat her chest in front of her house in grief.
"There were some American troops blocking the highway when a U.S. Humvee came near a gathering of children, and U.S. soldiers began to hand them candies," said Karim Shukir, 42. "Then suddenly, a speeding car bomb showed up and struck both the Humvee and the children."
Hours after the attack, about 200 people turned out for the funeral of five of the victims, in keeping with Muslim tradition to bury the dead quickly. The crowd shouted "Allahu akbar!" — "God is great — and some fired weapons in the air.
A U.S.-Iraqi military operation launched in May has significantly reduced bombings in the capital. But U.S. and Iraqi authorities acknowledge that it is difficult to eliminate such attacks entirely.
In other violence Wednesday, gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier while he was driving in western Baghdad, police said. Two other Iraqi soldiers, including one lieutenant, were killed in a gunfight in another west Baghdad neighborhood.
Separately, coalition forces in Baghdad have captured Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's (search) top lieutenant in Baghdad, Abu Abd al-Aziz, Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
Meanwhile, a senior Interior Ministry official acknowledged that up to 10 Sunni Arabs suffocated in a police vehicle while in custody and said those responsible will stand trial.
The incident has angered many Iraqis at a time of rising tension between Sunnis and the Shiite-dominated government. Their deaths are among many complaints of abusive treatment by Iraq's U.S.-trained security force.
Nine or 10 Sunni men reportedly suffocated after being held for several hours in a vehicle that lacked oxygen following an attack against an Interior Ministry patrol Sunday in west Baghdad.
Temperatures at the time soared to about 113 degrees. Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the head of intelligence department at the Interior Ministry, said the men appear "to have died after the vehicle's engine was turned off, stopping the air conditioning."
A member of an influential Sunni group also said Iraqi security forces stormed several houses in Baghdad early Wednesday and detained 13 people, including a Sunni cleric, before torturing and killing most of them.
One of the dead was a Shiite Muslim and the rest were Sunnis, said Sheik Hassan Sabri Salman of the Association of Muslim Scholars (search).
An Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of government policy, said an investigation had been launched in the latest allegation.
Later in the day, the families of the dead collected the bodies from the Baghdad coroner's office and buried them, the cleric and witnesses said. The Shiite was taken to the southern holy city of Najaf where members of his sect are usually buried, they said.
About 1,600 people have been killed in violence since April 28, when Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari (search) announced a new government dominated by Shiites and Kurds. The minority Sunnis make up the core of the insurgency.
Strange how you blatantly deny (despite photographic evidence to the contrary) that a suicide bomber killed innocent children because you were not there, yet readily jump on the '9/11 was an inside job' bandwagon. Unless of course you were there?
(note: I apologise for my harsh sarcastic tone. I'm in kind of a bad mood right now. I love Hash and Mr Baldy like the brothers they are to me, even if we do disagree)
Nevermind the witnesses who said they saw exactly what happened. Nevermind that the same type of situation has occured before.
No, Americans don't give candy to children. Never do, never have.
I guess the Berlin Airlift candy drops in East Germany was all a lie, too.
Anyways, more of the same crap. Can't believe Hash is allow to constantly support terrorism on the forum with no real consequences.
Bro Hash, I hope you wake up some day and realize that the Iraqi "resistance" is a miserable failure.
When they end up killing way more people they are supposedly fighting for than those they are actually fighting, it is not worth the effort.
I know the coalition has made terrible mistakes, but they ain't murdering people indiscriminatly on the scale seen in these terror attacks.
Did anyone hear about the Shi'a family that was murdered in their sleep a coupel days ago? 8 people or something all shot in their beds, the youngest only 2 years old.
I cry for the innocent children of Iraq who die in any manner, but I am furious when they are murdered in the name of my God, Allah and his Prophet (PBuH).
Last edited by Ansar Al-'Adl; 07-13-2005 at 08:42 PM.
I cry for the innocent children of Iraq who die in any manner, but I am furious when they are murdered in the name of my God, Allah and his Prophet (PBuH).
I cry for the innocent children of Iraq who die in any manner, but I am furious when they are murdered in the name of my God, Allah and his Prophet (PBuH).
I cry for the innocent children of any nation who die in this manner and it sickens me that anyone, of any religion, would ever kill an innocent in the name of God, Allah, etc.
I am NOT a terriorist, never will be, but I am an voting American. I just happen to have family both in Kuwait and IRAQ. How would you feel if you had NIECES AND NEPHEWS in IRAQ? Personally it would be easier for me for them to get out, but that is a little difficult right now. I personally don't know if my NIECES OR NEPHEWS were one of those children. I still didn't want them to grow up with a leader like SO DAMN IN SANE either. I don't like that BUSH 1 didn't finish that war the first time, and I didn't like that BUSH 2 did go and finished the war, but that is the way it is. I didn't VOTE for BUSH 1 or 2. That still doesn't mean that my family is safer. You make it sound like there is a good and a bad. Well if you think that what is going on is so bad, then what would you do.....
I am just mad because it sounds like you are fighting over wether children died or how many. I tell you what, if a man came up to me and did something to my daughter saying he is Muslim or not I would kill him. Yes, American Solders killed women, children and old men, so are these suicide bombers. They are both wrong.
SISTERS!!
:applaud: Just lowered most colored Hijabs to $6
Subhanallaah akhee are you waiting for me or baldy, or brother zaria or nablus to say something and defend the mujhaideen and defewnd my muslim brothers and come out screaming and ranting and cursing the americans, thats what you expected right? Akhee subhanallaah we grow tired of defending our muslim brothers from the likes of you secularist moderate so called 'muslims'. Only a dumb, dumb DUMB person whoses brain capacity onsists of 90% stupidiity and 10% ignorance, would listen and belive the western media, after the lies they told i dont belive a word they say. This is perfect for them, the 'brave liberaters' soldiers handing out candy to children, straight out a hollywood film scene, and then the evil baddies muslim come and blow them up, jussssst typical. Subhanallaah, i am not there, you are not there, so we cannat pass judgement on them, it could be just moe lies and propaganda to make us look bad, how do we know? I ask Allaah to bring the failed occupation of iraq to be destroyed swiftyl and may Allaah guide, unite and strenghten the mujahideen forces.
You know...I am greatful for this web site and the various posters. Because if it has taught me anything, it has taught me that muslims are no different from other religious groups/political groups. Everyone has their own share of extremists. If I only read your posts and assumed it was indicative of all muslims, my hope for peace in this world would be greatly diminished. I don't for one second think non-muslims/westerners/christians have not done their share of awful things in this world but for you to turn such a blind eye to the atrocities committed by people who claim to do so in the name of your religion is just, well, sad and naive to me. Do you honestly think that every wrongdoing in this world is committed by non-muslims? The last time I checked, there is no perfect human being on this earth. Your constant negativity towards non-muslims is no more wrong that if I were to think badly of all muslims because of the negative press given due to terrorist attacks.
too see the muslim sisters crying when they heard it was there children, sickning, may Allah (SWT) give them strength and unite the ummah, some people have no brains doing such things
"Lo! the Hour is surely coming, there is no doubt thereof; yet most of mankind believe not." (Al-Ghafir:59)
I have no problem with terrorists blowing themselves up, i just don't like it when they blow up innocent people with them.
Ain't that the truth.
format_quote Originally Posted by Hash
Subhanallaah coincidently i am aiming to go in the field of law and be a lawyer . Nevertheless, i understand akhee muezzin, i apoligise sincerly if i have made your bad mood even worse
Heh, don't worry, you didn't.
when you are in a bad mood, best thing is dont come online so idiots like me wont make you feel worse!
Come on man, you're not an idiot. We just disagree on things. Okay, we might strongly disagree on certain things, but at least we're using our God-given free-will to stand up for what we believe is right.
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