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Suicide car bomber blows up 17 Iraqis
Source: Agencies |
December 13, 2010, Monday
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A SUICIDE bomber blew up his car yesterday outside government offices in a province west of the Iraqi capital, killing 17 people, including women and elderly people waiting to collect welfare checks, officials said.
Six police officers were also among the dead in the latest strike on a favorite insurgent target, said police and hospital officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
At least 23 people were also wounded in yesterday's blast outside the provincial council compound in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, according to the officials.
"We rushed out of the office complex and saw many people injured and dead, lying on the street," said Anbar Deputy Governor Saadoun Obeid, who was at his office when the explosion hit, touching off a fire in the compound. "I saw two women who were dead, their bodies burnt."
Obeid said a traffic jam kept the suicide bomber from driving his explosives-laden car to the front gate. Eyewitnesses said the car exploded about 200 meters from the compound, creating a crater several meters wide.
Officials immediately blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attack in Anbar, a former stronghold of al-Qaida militants and Sunni insurgents that stretches all the way from just west of Baghdad to Iraq's borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Police found a second bomb in a nearby parking lot a few minutes later, but said they detonated it in a safe area. The compound in Ramadi, 115 kilometers west of Baghdad, also houses the Anbar police headquarters and the governor's office.
The chairman of the Anbar council, Jasim Mohammed al-Halbusi, put the casualty count much lower, at eight killed and 12 wounded, but said the death toll likely would rise.
Six police officers were also among the dead in the latest strike on a favorite insurgent target, said police and hospital officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
At least 23 people were also wounded in yesterday's blast outside the provincial council compound in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, according to the officials.
"We rushed out of the office complex and saw many people injured and dead, lying on the street," said Anbar Deputy Governor Saadoun Obeid, who was at his office when the explosion hit, touching off a fire in the compound. "I saw two women who were dead, their bodies burnt."
Obeid said a traffic jam kept the suicide bomber from driving his explosives-laden car to the front gate. Eyewitnesses said the car exploded about 200 meters from the compound, creating a crater several meters wide.
Officials immediately blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attack in Anbar, a former stronghold of al-Qaida militants and Sunni insurgents that stretches all the way from just west of Baghdad to Iraq's borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Police found a second bomb in a nearby parking lot a few minutes later, but said they detonated it in a safe area. The compound in Ramadi, 115 kilometers west of Baghdad, also houses the Anbar police headquarters and the governor's office.
The chairman of the Anbar council, Jasim Mohammed al-Halbusi, put the casualty count much lower, at eight killed and 12 wounded, but said the death toll likely would rise.
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