A surge of car bombings and shootings on Saturday claimed the
lives of more than?one hundred Iraqis with several hundreds
wounded in the capital Baghdad and left three northern cities under
curfew, including the oil rich city of Kirkuk.
Smoke billows after an
explosion in Baghdad. Death toll in the bomb attack in central
Baghdad's Sadriyah market rose to at least 120 people and some 200
wounded on Saturday.
In one of the deadliest single bombing in a busy market in
central Baghdad, at least 120 people were killed and some 246
others wounded when a truck bomb went off, a police source
said.
The attack took place an hour or so before the sunset, as an
explosive-laden truck loaded with food detonated in the crowded
vegetable market of Sadriyah on the east bank of the Tigris River,
where was crowded with people buying food for their evening meal,
said the source.
Ambulances and rescue teams pulled out bodies from the debris of
many shops and nearby buildings, while Iraqi security forces
cordoned off the area.
In the northern, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, seven car
bombings, including a suicide attack, killed at least two people
and wounded 26 others, according to police reports.
In one attack, a suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden car
near the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in central
Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, a city police commander,
Brigadier Burhan Taha told Xinhua News Agency by telephone.
At least two people were killed and 17 others wounded in the
attack, Taha said.
The KDP, whose head is president of the regional Kurdish
government based in Arbil province, is one of the two major Kurdish
parties dominated in Iraq after the US invasion in March 2003.
According to Taha, six more car bombings in different parts of
the city also wounded nine more people.
The authorities closed the oil-rich city and imposed curfew
starting from 4:00 PM (1300 GMT) Saturday to 6:00?AM (0300
GMT) on Sunday in anticipation of more attacks.
Further north, another curfew was imposed on Mosul City
following fierce clashes between gunmen and security forces erupted
in several neighborhoods of the city.
Governor of the Nineveh province Duraid Kashmolah imposed the
curfew on Mosul City, the capital of his province, and ordered the
Iraqi security forces to deploy in the city to fight hundreds of
gunmen hid in the neighborhoods.
Nevertheless, violence continued in the city despite the curfew
when a car bomb struck an ambulance, killing an injured woman who
was being taken to hospital, the police said.
A third city also put under curfew after gunmen stormed two
security checkpoints outside the Iraqi city of Samarra early in the
morning, killing ten security members and wounding nine others,
said a police source, adding three gunmen were also killed in the
attacks.
In Fallujah west of Baghdad, a series of insurgent attacks,
including a suicide car bombing, also raged in and around the Iraqi
restive city, killing a civilian and wounding 14 others, according
to local police source.
In the Amriyat al-Fallujah town, 7 km south of Fallujah City, a
suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden car into a police station,
wounding eight policemen, while a simultaneous mortar attack
targeted another police station in the town, killing a civilian and
wounding six others, the source said.
In Mahmoudiyah, some 30 km south of the capital Baghdad, a car
bomb went off near a commercial area in the town, killing a
civilian and wounding nine others, along with damaging several
storefronts and set fire in four civilian cars.
Violence rages in Iraq as sectarian killings, suicide attacks,
bombings, abductions cause dozens of Iraqi casualties daily, though
the Iraqi government has announced a new security plan to quell the
sectarian violence and growing militia dominance.
(Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2007)
