BAGHDAD - At least 10 people were killed and 56 wounded when a rocket attack demolished a building and a car bomb hit rescuers rushing to the scene in Baghdad on Sunday, an interior ministry official said. The twin explosions knocked down a four-storey building in the Zafaraniyah district of the Iraqi capital, the official and a witness said.‘A Katyusha rocket landed on a building in the Al-Qubyasi market. Five minutes later, 100 metres (yard) away from this building a car bomb went off,’ said the official after the blasts, which erupted at about 7:00 pm (1500 GMT).
A medical official who lives in the district and who saw the attacks told AFP: ‘There are dozens of bodies in the street. The building just collapsed. It was four-storeys, with homes and shops.’
‘Civil defence personnel are trying to get bodies out of the building. The shops underneath are destroyed,’ he said.
A third blast, apparently a roadside bomb, targeted a police patrol heading for the scene, the interior ministry official added. Three officers were wounded in this apparent follow-up attack, he said.