Car bomb kills 13 at Baghdad market
A car bomb killed at least 13 people and wounded 21 today when it exploded near a market outside the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
It happened after Iraqi police arrested four people in connection with Friday’s suicide bombing of two mosques in the eastern border town of Khanaqin which killed dozens of people, many of them worshippers.
One of those arrested was an apparent third suicide bomber, police said.
This morning’s explosion occurred near the Diyala Bridge area just southeast of the Iraqi capital as dozens of people were shopping at the popular market, police Colonel Nouri Ashour said.
The dead included five women, he added.
In yesterday’s attacks, two suicide bombers wandered into the Sheik Murad mosque and the Grand Mosque in Khanaqin during noon prayers and detonated explosives strapped to their bodies.
Reported death tolls ranged from 76, provided by Kurdish officials, to at least 100, provided by police. Hospital officials said on Friday that 74 people were killed and more than 100 injured in the largely Kurdish town about 90 miles northeast of Baghdad.
It was the deadliest attack since September 29, when three suicide car bombers struck in the mostly Shiite town of Balad just north of Baghdad, killing at least 99 people.
A security officer in Khanaqin, who asked not to be identified because of the nature of his job, said four people were arrested following the blasts, three were strangers who came from outside the town and the fourth was a third suicide bomber who was found near the scene.
The blast ripped down part of the roof of the Grand Mosque and heavily damaged the other place of worship. At sunset, dozens of people were still searching the rubble for missing family members and friends. Others collected shredded copies of the Muslim holy book, the Quran.
One of the survivors, Omar Saleh, said he was on his knees bowing in prayer when the bomb exploded at the Grand Mosque.
“The roof fell on us and the place was filled with dead bodies,” Saleh, 73, said from his hospital bed.
American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division sent medical specialists and supplies to the town, located about six miles from the Iranian border.
Friday’s mosque outrage came just hours after two car bombs exploded outside Baghdad’s Hamra hotel – the second attack against a compound housing foreign journalists in the Iraqi capital in less than a month.
Eight Iraqis were killed and at least 43 people were injured.
The latest attacks in Khanaqin and Baghdad have brought to at least 1,617 the number of Iraqis killed since the Shiite-led government took power April 28, according to an Associated Press count. At least 3,429 have been injured.
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