Region | Iraq
Baghdad triple bomb attack kills 31
Scores injured after bomber strikes in a crowd which gathered to help victims of twin blasts.
- Agencies
- Published: 10:10 November 10, 2008
- Nine-year-old Abdullah Mohammad gets treatment at a hospital in Baghdad after being injured in the blast.
- Image Credit: AP
Baghdad: Two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad on Monday and a suicide bomber blew himself up among police and civilians who rushed to help the wounded, a triple strike that killed 31 people and wounded 71.
In another attack, in Baquba, capital of volatile northern Diyala province, a teenaged girl in a suicide bomb vest blew herself up at a checkpoint of US-backed security patrolmen, killing five people and wounding 15. Police said the bomber was a girl of 13.
The triple attack in Baghdad, one of the deadliest incidents in Iraq for months, took place in the Kasra neighbourhood on the east bank of the Tigris River in a bustling area of tea shops and restaurants near a fine arts institute.
Male and female students, many of whom were having breakfast at the time of the strike, were among the dead and wounded, as were Iraqi soldiers and police who had rushed to the scene.
A television crew filmed scenes of massive devastation, with street-front restaurants filled with rubble and cars reduced to twisted steel.
Rising trend
"There was a huge explosion and before I went out to look another bomb went off," said Fadel Hussain, a waiter at a teahouse on Kassra Street, scene of the bombings. "Heavy smoke was everywhere. There were so many bloody victims on the ground, we helped to evacuate those people to ambulances," Hussain said.
The US and Iraqi military cordoned off the area that was littered with glass and scorched cars as parents desperately searched for their sons and daughters. One woman in her 40s and wearing a black abaya, the traditional black Arabic dress, sat on the ground crying uncontrollably. "I'm waiting for my husband who is inside the area looking for my son. I hope he is still alive," she sobbed.
Such coordinated and massive strikes have become rare but steady reminders of the capacity of militants to unleash mayhem in Iraq, even though they no longer control whole swathes of towns and villages and violence overall has fallen sharply.
The attack by a female suicide bomber in Baquba is part of a trend that has increased this year.
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