47 killed in wave of Iraq bombings

• Source: Global Times
• [00:51 August 11 2009]
• Comments

An Iraqi soldier stands at the site of two truck bombs in the village of Khaznah, east of Mosul, in northern Iraq. Photo: AFP

At least 47 people were killed and more than 250 wounded in a spate of bloody bombings near the restive northern Iraqi city of Mosul and in the capital Baghdad yesterday, police said.

In the deadliest single attack, two booby-trapped trucks exploded before dawn in the village of Khaznah, east of Mosul, leaving 28 people dead and 155 wounded.

The massive blasts leveled 35 houses and gouged deep craters in the ground in the prosperous village of 3,000, home to members of the tiny Shabak community, a sect of Kurdish origin.

Falah Ridha, a 23-year-old nurse wounded in the attack, said he was the only survivor of 12 people in his family’s home.

“Eleven people in my family were killed when the house collapsed,” he said. “All of them woke up after the first bomb, but the second bomb was very close to my house; it was like an earthquake.”

In Baghdad, two bombs went off as day laborers gathered in the early morning looking for work, according to police and interior ministry officials.

The first bomb, hidden inside a bag of cement, exploded at Hay al-Amel in the west of the capital, killing seven people and injuring 46.

The second attack, a car bomb in Shurta Arbaa in the north of the city, killed nine people and wounded 36 others.

A third bombing on a market in the southern suburb of Saidiyah killed three people and wounded 14.

Despite a marked reduction in violence in recent months, attacks against security forces and civilians remain common in Baghdad, Mosul and in the ethnically divided northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

The number of violent deaths fell by a third last month to 275, from 437 in June, following the pull-out of US forces from urban areas.

The figure in May was 155, the lowest of any month since the invasion.

“I hope that the (US) troops stay here ... until everything is okay and Kirkuk’s problems are solved,” Kirkuk Police Chief Major General Jamal Taher Bakr told AFP. “Until that point, until that time, I think it is very necessary that the troops be in Iraq.”

AFP