Suicide bombers kill 61 in Iraq
Pastor Dale Morgan
Friday February 2, 9:54 AM Reuters
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Suicide bombers kill 61 in Iraq*
By Ahmed Rasheed
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers killed 61 people and wounded 150
when they blew themselves up at a crowded market in Iraq's Shi'ite
Muslim town of Hilla on Thursday, police said.
The blasts, along with bomb and mortar attacks in Baghdad that killed 11
people, underscored the challenges for the government of Shi'ite Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has pledged a U.S.-backed crackdown in the
lawless capital.
Police said the bodies of 30 people were found dumped in Baghdad, where
sectarian violence has been mounting.
New figures showed civilian deaths rose to a record level in January.
The data from an Interior Ministry official, widely viewed as an
indicative but only partial record of violent deaths, showed 1,971
people died from attacks in Iraq in January, slightly up from the
previous high of 1,930 deaths in December.
The first suicide bomber in Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad,
blew himself up when police tried to frisk him outside the central
market, police said.
A second suicide bomber struck soon afterwards, they said.
A man strapped with explosives also blew himself up in a minibus in the
religiously mixed Baghdad district of Karrada, wrecking the vehicle and
killing six people and wounding 12.
A car bomb in Rusafi, one of Baghdad's biggest shopping districts,
killed three people and wounded seven.
Police said 10 mortar bombs hit Adhamiya, a mainly Sunni Arab area in
northwest Baghdad, killing two people and wounding nine.
Thousands of U.S. troops are being sent to Baghdad to help Iraqi
security forces in what is being widely seen as a final attempt to avert
all-out sectarian civil war between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and Sunnis
once dominant under Saddam Hussein.
IRAN ACCUSED
In what has become almost daily U.S. charges of Iranian interference in
Iraq, a senior U.S. diplomat accused Tehran of supplying Iraqi Shi'ite
militants with weapons technology used to kill U.S. troops.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told U.S. National Public
Radio in an interview for broadcast on Thursday Washington had been
tracking Iranian involvement in attacks for about two years and had
found increasing evidence Iran had given assistance to Shi'ites in
southern Iraq.
"We have picked up individuals who we believe are giving very
sophisticated explosive technology to Shia insurgent groups who then use
that technology to target and kill American soldiers," said Burns.
"It's a very serious situation. And the message from the United States
is Iran should cease and desist."
Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, has vowed to tackle militants on both sides
of the sectarian divide.
The prime minister has been criticised in the past for failing to
confront militias tied to parties within his government, including some
with links to Iran.
The latest statistics on civilian deaths suggested no let up in violence
since Maliki announced his plan for the security crackdown in Baghdad,
the epicentre of the conflict in Iraq.
The Interior Ministry toll, provided to Reuters by a ministry source,
refers to people killed in terrorism -- a category that may not include
many of the dozens of unidentified bodies found daily in Baghdad, many
the victims of sectarian death squads.
(Additional reporting by Hamza al-Badri and Mussab al-Khairalla and Ross
Colvin)