| Follow-up from yesterday's story. |
Three of four separate car bombings tore through BaghdadÂ’s Karrada district on the eastern side of the Tigris River, two of them exploding almost simultaneously near a government office and a busy market area about 500 metres away. One went off near a Karrada office which issues identity cards to Iraqis. Police said that bomb appeared to target a passing police patrol and that three police officers were among six people killed. Twenty more people were hurt.
“It was a horrible scene, suddenly fire spread all over the area. I saw two charred bodies of policemen inside their car and the wounded were lying on the ground, only their hands moving and asking for help,” Abu Nour, a 45-year-old supermarket owner, told Reuters. “We were terrified, we could see only fire, destruction and death. I started to hate life,” he said.
Television pictures showed a line of burning cars in a narrow street leading to the identity card office as residents and shoppers ran for cover.
Four more people were killed and another 18 wounded in the almost simultaneous blast nearby in an area close to one of the main bridges leading across the Tigris river to the heavily fortified Green Zone. Less than an hour later another car bomb, again apparently targeting a passing police patrol, detonated in KarradaÂ’s al-Wathiq square, killing three people. Two policemen were among the dead.
Four more people died soon after when a car bomb exploded at lunchtime outside Seerwan, BaghdadÂ’s most popular kebab restaurant, across the Tigris next to the Green Zone.