22 killed in Iraq bombings

Mosque, wedding are targeted

By Anthony Shadid and William Branigin, Washington Post | January 22, 2005

BAGHDAD -- A car bomb exploded outside a Shi'ite Muslim mosque and a suicide bomber blew up an explosive-packed ambulance at a Shi'ite wedding party yesterday, killing at least 22 people on one of the most important Muslim holidays.

The car bomb killed at least 15 worshipers and wounded 40 others as they were leaving the Taf Mosque in southwestern Baghdad after Friday prayers, officials said.

Later, at least seven people were killed and 16 injured when the ambulance exploded at a wedding party of the Shi'ite Buamer tribe in a village south of Baghdad near Yusufiyah. The tribe has had tense relations with Sunni Muslim clans in the area, and several tribe members have been kidnapped or killed by Sunni insurgents.

Salah al-Ameri, a cousin of the groom, said the attacker drove the ambulance into the garden where the celebration was taking place and set off the blast. The bride and groom were among those injured, he said.

The two bombings took place as Sunnis and Shi'ites were marking the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice. The feast coincides with the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

The bombings occurred a day after militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a new audio recording posted on the Internet, denounced Iraqi Shi'ites for supporting US forces and harshly condemned Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Zarqawi, a Jordanian, heads a group of radical Islamic fighters affiliated with the Al Qaeda terrorist network and has claimed responsibility for dozens of bombings, beheadings, and other violence in Iraq.

Police cordoned off the mosque, making it impossible to observe the scene after yesterday's bombing. But survivors taken to Yarmouk Hospital said a white car plowed toward the mosque and then exploded.

The blast left several cars in flames and showered the area with charred debris.

Dozens of weeping men and women frantically searched the hospital for news about loved ones feared caught in the bombing.

A distraught man sat beside his dead 14-year-old son, covered with a sheet, and cried out, ''I had breakfast with him this morning. I told him, 'Let's go to your grandfather,' but he insisted on going for prayers first."

A woman dressed in a black cloak, or abaya, fainted as she identified the body of her son in the hospital's morgue and was carried away by relatives.

During Friday prayers at Baghdad's Um al-Quraa mosque, a prominent Sunni cleric issued a fresh call for putting off the elections until the country is more secure and free of its foreign occupiers.

''How does the government call for holding elections at a time when it cannot protect places of worship in the country?" Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sumaidei said. ''It is important to have a country free from occupation forces before holding elections."

Insurgents -- a term that encompasses a disparate group of guerrillas, sometimes with competing ideologies -- have threatened to disrupt the elections at all costs, deeming the voting a victory for US efforts in Iraq.

Iraq's Shi'ites, who were oppressed for decades, strongly support the upcoming election. The Shi'ites believe it will propel them to a position of influence equal to their standing as the country's majority group. They make up an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.

But militants among the Sunni Arab minority, which lost privilege when their patron Saddam Hussein was toppled, have vowed to stop the election. Some Sunni clerics and politicians have called for a boycott, saying violence in Sunni areas will keep people from the polls and skew the outcome of the balloting against them.

Elsewhere in Iraq yesterday:

A US soldier from the Army's First Infantry Division was killed and another was wounded in a predawn raid north of Baghdad on an insurgent cell involved in making explosive devices, the US military said. The raid on eight locations near the town of Duluiyah resulted in the death of one suspect and the capture of 22 others, the military said.

In the northern city of Mosul, US troops killed three insurgents who attacked an Iraqi police vehicle, the military said. For a second day, insurgents shelled a hospital in the city where US and Iraqi forces have taken up positions, residents said. There was no word on casualties.

In the town of Hit, about 100 miles west of Baghdad, insurgents stormed a police station and seized weapons and other gear before blowing up the building, police said. Insurgents burst into the station, which was nearly empty for the holiday, and placed explosives inside, said Iraqi police Captain Abdullah al-Hiti.

An insurgent group beheaded an Iraqi soldier in broad daylight in the restive rebel town of Ramadi, Reuters reported. They left the body, still dressed in army fatigues, in the street with the severed head placed on the torso and a note warning other Iraqi troops to quit.

Militants threatening to kill eight Chinese hostages said in a new videotape they would treat them ''mercifully" if China, which opposed the US-led war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, banned all Chinese nationals from entering Iraq. China responded by appealing to ''friendship between the Chinese people and the Iraqi people" and pointed out it had already advised its nationals to leave Iraq. The men, who came to Iraq in search of work, were abducted earlier this month.

An Italian soldier was killed by gunfire while riding in a helicopter patrolling the southern Shi'ite city of Nasiriyah, Italy's Defense Ministry said. The area has been deemed safe for elections.

In northern Iraq, insurgents attacked two schools that are to be used as polling stations later this month, but no one was hurt, police said. One school was hit with a rocket, and police dismantled a bomb planted at a third school.

Near the central city of Samarra, saboteurs set an oil pipeline on fire, police said. The pipeline, 12 miles south of the city, links the northern Beiji refinery to Baghdad's Dora refinery.

Material from the Associated Press and Reuters was included in this report.

From today's globe:

22 killed in Iraq bombings (Boston Globe)

House report proposes troop withdrawal plan (Boston Globe)

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