50 feared dead in Iraq car bombing

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, February 11, 2004

50 feared dead in Iraq car bombing

A car bombing attack hit a police station south of Baghdad Tuesday, killing some 50 people and wounding dozens of others, witnesses and TV reports said.

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A car bombing attack Tuesday hit a police station in the central Iraqi town of Iskandariyah, some 40 km south of Baghdad, killing at least 50 and wounding dozens, local police and hospital sources said.

Local police officers said the car blast was a suicide attack carried out by a diver who detonated the explosives as the car passed by the station.

A local hospital source said at least 50 bodies were counted and nearly 60 were injured in the attack.

According to the source, the death toll was expected to rise because there were "many in serious or critical conditions."

US army officials earlier confirmed that 35 were killed and 75 wounded in the blast, but said the figure could be higher since Iraqi authorities were still handling the investigation.

Lt. Col. Dan Williams, a spokesman for the US-led coalition forces, told reporters that the victims were all local Iraqi civilians or policemen and no US or other coalition forces soldierswere killed or injured in the attack.

Many of the wounded were evacuated to hospitals in Baghdad after the blast because Iskandariya's hospital lacked the capacity, the police officers said.

According to the police officers, there were many local civilians waiting in line at the police station to fill in applications for jobs as new police force when the suicide bomber blew up the car.

US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division sealed off the area around the bombing site shortly after the bombing occurred at about 9:30 am (0630 GMT) and refused to allow anybody to access the police station.

From the top of a nearby building, a Xinhua correspondent saw that the bombing occurred some 10 meters away from the main building of the police station, leaving a big hole on the ground and pieces of human body parts and burned clothes everywhere.

Hundreds of angry local residents gathered around the bombing site, shouting anti-US catchwords such as "go away, American occupiers".

"Since the coming of the American and foreign forces, we see bombings everywhere in Iraq, and the American occupiers have totally destroyed our sense of security," an 69-year-old man, giving his name only as Andat, told Xinhua.

"No matter whoever are behind the bombing, the Americans should take responsibility for those being killed," he said.

A local hospital source told Xinhua that they don't have enough places and the worrying relatives of the wounded have attacked several groups of foreign journalist.

According to the source, at least two groups of journalists coming from Japan and the United States were attacked. Their cameras were robbed and thrown onto the ground.

There have been several major suicide bombing attacks against the collation and local Iraqi police targets since the beginning of this year.

As many as 109 people were killed on Feb. 1 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up at the offices of two Kurdish parties inthe northern Iraqi city of Irbil.

On Jan. 18, a suicide car bomb exploded near the main gate to the US-led coalition's headquarters in central Baghdad, killing at least 31 people.

Tuesday's suicide attack took place while a UN experts team was in Iraq to assess the feasibility of an early elections to Iraq's first post-occupation government, which is due to be installed before July 1 this year.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan gave the green light for the trip after meeting US President George W. Bush last week in Washington. He expressed his hope for the UN team "to help Iraqis in power handover" from US-led coalition forces despite what he called "the difficult security situation".

The latest deadly suicide attack in Iraq also came one day after the US military warned that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network may have plotted to provoke a civil war between different sectarian groups in Iraq.

US senior spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt made the remarks as he confirmed that the US forces have obtained a letter indicating the plot.

He said the letter, which was seized during a raid on an al-Qaida hideout in Baghdad, could have been written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian believed to be a high-ranking member of the terror group.

"We believe the document is credible and we take the threat seriously," Kimmitt told reporters. "There is clearly a plan on thepart of outsiders to come into this country and spark civil war", he stressed.

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