Region | Iraq
Car bomb kills 18 boys
A car bomb exploded yesterday near a football pitch popular with young soccer players, killing at least 18 boys in a city west of Baghdad known as a centre of the Sunni insurgency, police said.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 February 28, 2007
- Children play football in a park in Falluja. A car bomb exploded near a football pitch popular with young soccer players, killing at least 18 boys.
- Image Credit: Reuters
Baghdad : A car bomb exploded yesterday near a football pitch popular with young soccer players, killing at least 18 boys in a city west of Baghdad known as a centre of the Sunni insurgency, police said.
The attack occurred just three days after more than 50 people were killed outside a mosque in a nearby village where the imam had spoken out against the group Al Qaida in Iraq - pointing to increasingly bloody attempts to silence their opponents.
The children, aged between 10 and 15, died when a car parked next to a football pitch in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi exploded while they were playing, an Iraqi defence official said.
The Interior Ministry did not immediately return calls for further details of the attack. US Marines are stationed near Ramadi.
It was not immediately known if the children were the intended targets, but young people are often caught in Iraq's daily bloodshed. On Sunday, more than 40 people - mostly college students - were killed in a bombing outside a mostly Shiite college in Baghdad.
3 US soldiers killed
At least 10 people were killed in bombings in Baghdad, where a security operation was launched earlier this month targeting militant factions and sectarian death squads that have ruled Baghdad's streets.
The US military also suffered losses, with three soldiers killed yesterday by a roadside bomb as they carried out a mission outside Baghdad.
As part of the sweeps, US and Iraqi forces staged raids in Baghdad's main Shiite militant stronghold in politically sensitive forays into areas loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Al Sadr.
Al Sadr withdrew his powerful Mehdi Army militia from checkpoints and bases under intense government pressure to let the neighbour-by-neighbour security sweeps move ahead.
But Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and others have opposed extensive US-led patrols through Sadr City, fearing a violent backlash could derail the security effort.
The pre-dawn raids appeared to highlight a strategy of pinpoint strikes in Sadr City rather than the flood of soldiers sent into some Sunni districts.
At least 16 people were arrested after US-Iraqi commandos - using concussion grenades - stormed six homes, police said.
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