Zarqawi wants the credit for killing so many innocents...
Baghdad car bombs kill 10 Iraqi troops
Blasts come as mourners protest at site of Hillah bombing
Hadi Mizban / AP
Iraqi soldiers sift through the wreckage at the scene of a car bomb explosion outside an Iraqi army base that occupies the former Muthanna airport, in central Baghdad, on Wednesday.
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 6:26 a.m. ET March 2, 2005BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two car bombs Wednesday targeted the Iraqi military in Baghdad, killing 10 soldiers and wounding dozens of others.
The first car bomb exploded outside an Iraqi army base in central Baghdad that occupies the former Muthanna airport, which has been targeted by insurgents several times over the last year.
An Interior Ministry security official, Ayad Hadi al-Maliki, said six people were killed and 25 people were wounded in the blast 15 of them civilians.
The explosion could be heard across the city, and a plume of black smoke billowed into the air afterward. Flames leapt from two destroyed civilian vehicles. Debris from the blast was strewn around the area, and witnesses said the severed head of a female soldier lay on the ground.
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U.S. and Iraqi troops blocked roads and sealed off the area after the attack, preventing people from entering. Helicopters hovered overhead.
Police officer Salam Hashim Mahmoud said the bomber drove up to the base gate, where army recruits normally line up to apply for jobs. Residents said Iraqi security forces opened fire after the incident.
About an hour later, another car bomb exploded in southern Baghdad’s Doura neighborhood, killing four Iraqi soldiers at an army checkpoint and wounding three others, police told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The violence came as thousands of mostly black-clad Iraqis protested outside a medical clinic in Hillah, a city 60 miles south of the capital where a suicide car bomber killed 125 people a day earlier.
The protesters, braving the threat of another attack as they waved clenched fists and condemned foreign fighters.
Police prevented people from parking cars in front of the clinic or the hospital, where authorities blocked hospital gates with barbed wire to stave off hundreds of victims’ relatives desperate for information on loved ones.
'Please help me'
Insurgents, fighting both American forces and the Iraqi government, released a video Tuesday of French journalist Florence Aubenas, 43, kidnapped nearly two months ago. The 43-year-old correspondent for the French daily Liberation appeared alone in front of a maroon-colored background, pleading for help.
Ahmad Al-rubaye / AFP - Getty Images
An Iraqi man waves the national flag on Tuesday as he sits on the roof of a vehicle next to the coffin of a relative, as they leave the general hospital morgue in the city of Hillah, where a car bomb killed 120 people a day earlier.
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The video of the French journalist, who disappeared Jan. 5, was dropped off at the Baghdad offices of an international news agency. There was no indication of when the tape was made.
“Please help me, my health is very bad,” she said in English. “Please, it’s urgent now. I ask especially Mr. Didier Julia, the French deputy, to help me.”
Al-Zarqawi purportedly claims responsibility
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s terror group, which has repeatedly seized foreigners and attacked Americans, purportedly claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Hillah. It was not possible to independently verify the claim, which was posted on the Internet.
The group said it targeted recruits for the Iraqi security services, whom it referred to as “apostates,” but did not mention those killed in a nearby market. The car bomb went off at a site where police and army recruits were lining up for physicals exams at the medical clinic.
Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that improved Iraqi intelligence sources and “treason within his own organization” had led to successes against Zarqawi.
“His days in Iraq are numbered,” Abizaid said.
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