Grisly discovery: 9 severed policemans heads
Pastor Dale Morgan
Grisly discovery: 9 severed police heads in Saddam Hussein's hometown.*
by Jay Deshmukh in Baghdad
September 24, 2006 05:00am
Article from: Agence France-Presse
IRAQ marked a bloody start to Ramadan overnight with a Baghdad bomb
killing 31, mainly women and children, and the grisly discovery of nine
severed police heads in Saddam Hussein's hometown.
Authorities in the war-torn country fear that Iraq's fourth post-Saddam
Ramadan, which started at dawn for Sunnis and Kurds and begins on Sunday
for Shiites, will be accompanied by a wave of violence.
The blast in Sadr City, a Shiite stronghold of Baghdad, and the gruesome
discovery of the police heads in the central city of Tikrit came less
than a day after an Al-Qaeda led group warned of attacks during Ramadan.
A few hours into the day, explosives placed in oil barrels near a fuel
tanker at a Sadr City service station where locals had been queuing went
off, igniting a fireball that killed 31 people and wounded 34.
Most of the victims were women and their children waiting for the
cooking fuel for the first weekend of Ramadan.
"The explosives were set off as people gathered to buy fuel from a
petrol tanker which was standing at the service station," a Sadr City
police officer said.
People from the neighbourhood were seen rushing to the blast site using
blankets as stretchers to carry the victims to hospitals.
A large pool of blood, mixed with oil and stagnant water, could be seen
near the site, with rescuers searching in it for body parts and the
valuables of victims to be returned to relatives.
Sadr City, the impoverished district home to nearly two million Shiites,
is often a target for Sunni extremists in the Shiite-Sunni sectarian
conflict in which thousands of people have died since February.
Later in the day, a bicycle bomb blast targeted a police patrol in
central Baghdad after Ramadan's traditional post-sunset iftar meal,
killing two passersby and wounding four police and four residents,
security sources said.
The bombings followed a warning on Friday by the Al-Qaeda led group, the
Mujahedeen Shura Council, of increased attacks during Ramadan.
"The ... Mujahedeen Shura Council announces that Saturday is the
beginning of the blessed month of Ramadan" for Sunnis, it said, adding
it hoped this would bring "conquests and victories".
But a little-known Sunni insurgent group, "Jund al-Sahaba fi al-Iraq",
or "Soldiers of the (Prophet Mohammed's) Companions in Iraq", claimed
responsibility for Ramadan's first attack.
In an Internet message, it said it had placed "a booby-trapped car ...
in Sadr City, the city of Rafidha", a derogatory term used for Shiites.
Police said, however, that the bomb was detonated by setting off hidden
explosives in oil barrels.
Separately, nine severed heads of policemen were found in Tikrit,
according to police.
Two boxes were tossed out of a speeding car in the centre of Tikrit, the
capital of Salaheddin province. Such decapitations are characteristic of
extremist Islamist groups like Al-Qaeda.
The Islamic fasting month of Ramadan has been characterised by increased
violence in Iraq in the past few years.
On Wednesday, US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell had
warned of increased attacks this year also during Ramadan -- the Muslim
calendar's holiest period.
The US authorities announced the death of three soldiers and also of a
US national working as a contractor with the state department in Baghdad.
Two of the troops died in a roadside bombing Saturday against their
patrol in Hawijah, near the northern city of Kirkuk, said a statement,
with another US soldier killing by a bomb blast in northern Baghdad.
The deaths took the military's losses in Iraq since the invasion to
2,698, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures, while the
contractor was killed in a rocket attack Friday in the southern city of
Basra.
Separately, a Danish soldier was killed and eight others injured early
by a roadside bomb near the southern city of Basra, the Danish air force
said.
Police also recovered seven corpses in Iraq on Saturday.
Dozens of others were wounded in other attacks, while a Sunni imam was
arrested in northern town of Samarra.