14 confirmed dead in Baghdad car bomb
A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad killing at least 14 people and wounding 40 today in the latest violence in the lead-up to next weekend’s elections.
The explosives-laden car blew up outside the al-Taf mosque where Shiites were celebrating one of Islam’s most important holidays, Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice. The feast coincides with the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Attacks on Shiites have increased in the run-up to Iraq’s parliamentary and provincial elections on January 30.
Today’s blast was the second outside a Shiite mosque in the capital this week and it came a day after a chief terror leader in Iraq berated Shiites in an internet audio recording that appeared aimed at sowing division in the country.
An official at Baghdad’s al-Yarmouk Hospital said the blast at the mosque killed at least 14 people and wounded 40 others.
The car exploded as worshippers were leaving prayers in the building, a witness said. The blast left several cars in flames and showered the area with charred debris.
At al-Yarmouk Hospital, dozens of weeping men and women frantically searched for news about loved ones feared caught up 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. She was carried away by relatives.
Iraq’s Shiites – a community that was oppressed for decades – strongly supports the vote, believing it will propel them to a position of influence equal to their standing as the country’s majority group.
They make up about 60% of the 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 vote.
Some Sunni clerics and politicians have called for a boycott of the vote, saying violence in Sunni areas will keep people from the polls and skew the outcome of the balloting against them.
In a new internet audio recording purportedly from Iraq’s most feared terror leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the speaker denounced Iraqi Shiites for fighting alongside US troops.
Al-Zarqawi, the leader of Iraq’s al-Qaida affiliate, ridiculed Iraq’s most prominent Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and berated Shiites for fighting alongside American troops against their Sunni countrymen in Fallujah in November.
“They broke into the safe houses of God,” the speaker said of Shiites. “They defiled them and they hung the photos of their Satan, al-Sistani, on the walls and they spitefully wrote: ‘Today, your land; tomorrow it will be your honour.”’
Al-Zarqawi called on his followers to show patience and prepare for a long struggle against the Americans, promising that “ferocious wars … take their time” but victory was assured.
A US soldier was killed today during a pre-dawn raid north of Baghdad, the military said.
