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Blasts kill 62 in Shiite area of Baghdad
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Blasts kill 62 in Shiite area of Baghdad
Car bombs and a rocket barrage struck a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, killing at least 62 people, a municipal official said. The rockets apparently were fired from a mostly Sunni district targeted by US troops in a crackdown against the sectarian violence roiling the capital.
About 140 were injured in the attack on the Zafraniyah neighborhood in southern Baghdad, which began about 7:15 p.m. with two car bombs and a barrage of an estimated nine rockets, Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Saddoun Abu al-Ula said.
He said the barrage heavily damaged three buildings, including a multi-story apartment house that collapsed. Al-Ula said the rockets appeared to have been fired from the neighborhood of Dora, which has been the focus of thousands of US troops sent to try to restore peace in Baghdad.The head of a municipal council, Mohammed al-Rubaie, told Iraqi government television yesterday that the death toll had risen to 62. He gave no precise number of injured but officials late Sunday put the figure at more than 140. Several large explosions were heard in central Baghdad at sunrise yesterday, but it was unclear where they came from. The complex style of the assault was similar to a July 27 attack of mortars, rockets and car bombs on another mostly Shiite district, Karradah, which killed 31 people. Police said the rockets and mortars that struck Karradah also were fired from Dora.
A Sunni extremist group, the al-Sahaba Soldiers, claimed responsibility for the Karradah attack to punish Shiites for supporting the ?crusaders,? or Americans, and the ?treacherous? Iraqi government. Muhanna Yassin, who lives in Zafraniyah, said the attack left the neighborhood ?a total mess? with ?bodies of the dead and injured scattered around in the streets ? old, young, women and children.?
He said many of the victims were cut by flying glass and debris, leaving parts of the streets soaked in blood. Iraqi state television reported that some victims may be trapped in the rubble of the apartment building. The multiple attacks were part of the grisly pattern of Sunni-Shiite violence that American officials consider the greatest threat to Iraq?s stability more than three years after the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein?s regime.
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