<font color=brown> I am curious as to why some people believe that after 30 June, these bombings will stop. There is nothing in their motivation to suggest that the bombings will stop.........in fact, I expect them to intensify after 30 June.
What makes some think otherwise? <font color=black>
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Suicide Bomb Brings Carnage to Baghdad Street
Mon Jun 14, 2004 06:15 AM ET
(Page 1 of 2)
By Lin Noueihed
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis were opening their shops, walking to their offices and queuing up to try to find casual work in a central Baghdad street on Monday when a suicide car bomber blew an ordinary morning apart.
The car exploded just as a convoy of four-wheel-drive civilian vehicles used by foreign contractors drove though the busy area, killing at least 13 people and enraging locals who battered the wrecked vehicles and set them ablaze.
"I walked past the convoy on my way to work. Then this blast hit behind me, throwing me to the ground," said Abdel Zahra Rahim Lutfi, lying injured at Al-Kindi Hospital.
"That area is so busy in the morning. Lots of people were hurt."
Five foreign electricity contractors were killed in the blast near Tahrir (Liberation) Square. Among the dead were two Britons and a Frenchman.
Hospitals said eight other people, including two African workers, were also killed. About 60 were wounded. Many had limbs torn off by the blast.
The impact of the blast shattered windows down filthy side alleys, lined with workshops and lodgings for laborers who gather in the area looking for casual work.
The facade of a three-storey brick building that served as a hostel collapsed, crushing some inside. The stairwells, beds and other furniture could be seen from the street.
Smoke was still rising from the burned-out shells of three civilian cars blown inside the ground floor of the hostel by the force of the blast. At least four other cars lay battered on the thoroughfare, which Iraqi police closed off to traffic.
Locals and firefighters doused the blaze and sifted through the rubble, lifting casualties into waiting ambulances.
"There were three of these four-wheel drives on the road when a car came out from near that hostel, overtook them and exploded, sending one flying off the road and into flames," said passer-by Ali Rasoul Shammali. "There were a lot of ordinary cars parked on this street, a lot of people just going to work." Continued ...
reuters.com |
