A suicide bomb exploded Sunday amid an Army Day celebration in central Baghdad, killing at least 11 people and wounding 17, an Interior Ministry official said.
The bomb attack occurred about 12:30 p.m. Sunday as people participated in an event called "The Gathering for Iraq" in the Karrada district of central Baghdad, the official said, as soldiers and civilians were being given gifts by a nongovernmental organization. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed when they tried to thwart the attack by throwing themselves on the bomber who had slipped into the crowd, The Associated Press reports.
The bomber detonated his explosives vest, and killed an additional nine people, including three police officers and four civilians, an Interior Ministry official told CNN. "These two Iraqi martyrs gave their lives so that others might live," according to a statement issued by the U.S. military, the AP reports.
| I take absolutely no issue with the use of the term "martyrs." They were good men and brave, and I hope there is an appropriate reward for them in the afterlife. |
Also on Sunday, gunmen shot to death a Shiite tribal sheik active in an effort to counter militias in his northeastern Baghdad neighborhood, Iraqi officials said. Ismaiel Abbas was killed instantly when gunmen in two cars attacked him near his home in the Shaab Shiite neighborhood at 8 a.m., an Interior Ministry official said. Witnesses told investigators the gunmen were Shiite militia, but police are still investigating, the official said. Sheik Abbas was part of an effort to form an armed group to combat militias in his neighborhood, the official said.
A third attack Sunday involved a parked bomb which killed four, including a police officer, in northeast Baghdad Sunday afternoon, the Interior Ministry official said. Eleven others were wounded when the bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol on a crowded street in the Qahira neighborhood.
In the Nahda commercial area in central Baghdad, one civilian was killed and four others wounded when another car bomb exploded about 2:30 p.m. local time. An Interior Ministry official said that the explosion was followed by four mortar rounds attacks in the same area and damaged 15 civilian cars, but there were no other causalities. |