Suicide bomber targets British soldiers
A suicide bomber blew up his car as a British military patrol passed by in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on today, killing himself and three civilians, police said.
A man suspected of being involved in the bombing, and who got out of the vehicle shortly before the blast, was caught by passers-by and stabbed to death, said police Lieutenant Colonel Ali Kazem
Two others also spotted getting out of the vehicle before the explosion were caught by members of the public and later arrested.
At least 15 people were wounded in the explosion, including three seriously, hospital officials said.
The three civilians killed were two men and a boy, police said.
No British soldiers were wounded in the attack.
Unlike other areas of Iraq, Basra has been relatively calm and has been spared suicide bomb attacks like the one in Baghdad on Wednesday night that killed at least seven people. British forces are responsible for security in the area.
In Baghdad rescue crews called off their search for survivors of a massive suicide bombing of a hotel where a Briton was among the dead.
The military had earlier said that 27 people were killed in the Baghdad bombing. It then revised that to 17 and later today Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said only seven were killed.
Governing Council official Rowsch Shawayas said Iraqi authorities put the toll at “about 20.” Iraq’s health minister, Khudeir Abbas, said seven were killed and 35 injured.
One Briton was killed and another was wounded, the British government said.
Iraq does not have a centralised system for handling such tragedies and with the bodies of victims going to different morgues, government departments and other agencies often disagree over death tolls.
Elsewhere, gunmen opened fire on a minibus in the town of Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, killing three Iraqi journalists and wounding nine other employees of a coalition-funded TV station in north-eastern Iraq, police said.
Rebels often target Iraqis perceived as collaborators with the Americans and the attacks underlined the continued vulnerability of Iraqi civilians nearly a year after Saddam Hussein was ousted.
Insurgents also fired mortar rounds at two military bases yesterday, killing three American soldiers and wounding nine other. The deaths brought to 567 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of hostilities last year.
American Colonel Jill Morgenthaler confirmed the attack in Baghdad was a suicide bombing but said the destroyed Mount Lebanon Hotel may not have been the intended target because the vehicle loaded with explosives was in the middle of the street and not parked in front of the hotel.
She said it was not clear what the target may have been. The hotel is in the middle of a busy district that is both commercial and residential.
Shawayas, the council official, said the vehicle was moving at the time of the explosion.
The explosion, which left a jagged 20 foot crater, also torched nearby homes, offices, cars and shops, sending dazed and wounded people stumbling from the wreckage.
A spokesman for the Iraqi Governing Council, Hamid al-Kafaai, blamed al-Qaida for the blast but offered no evidence to support the accusation.
“It is aimed at terrorising the civilians, destabilising the country and hampering the democratic march in the country,” he said.
A US counterterrorism official said al-Qaida-linked Jordanian Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is among those suspected of playing a key role.
The Mount Lebanon was a so-called soft target because it did not have concrete blast barriers and other security measures that protect offices of the US led coalition and buildings where Westerners live and work.
Shawayas said the attack on the relatively unprotected target was “evidence this terrorist group is weak and cannot get to important targets.”
He said the attackers were foreigners, according to evidence, which he did not disclose.
A Moroccan, three Jordanians, two Britons, two Lebanese and an Egyptian were registered as having rooms in the Lebanese-owned hotel on the night of the blast, hotel duty manager Bashir Abdel-Hadi said.
He said among those killed were the hotel’s three security guards, who were standing in front of it at the time.
Much of the damage from the blast was done to buildings surrounding the hotel. Across the street, the home of a Christian family of seven was virtually destroyed. Four bodies pulled from the wreckage.
Colonel Ralph Baker of the 1st Armored Division estimated that the bomb contained 1,000 pounds of explosives. He said the bomb was a mix of plastic explosives and artillery shells.
That was the same mixture of explosives used in the last August’s suicide attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people.
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