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41 corpses found in Iraq; blast kills four
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-03-10 08:23
Iraqi authorities found 41 decomposed bodies — some bullet-riddled, others
beheaded — at sites near the Syrian border and south of the capital, and said
Wednesday they included women and children who may have been killed because
insurgents thought their families were collaborating with U.S. forces.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber driving a garbage truck loaded with explosives
and at least one other gunman shot their way into a parking lot in an attempt to
blow up a hotel used by Western contractors. At least four people, including the
attackers and a guard, were killed.
![Firemen try to put out flames after a garbage truck exploded at dawn near a hotel used by western contractors in central Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, March 9, 2005. The blast shook buildings and covered the area with acrid black smoke, and volleys of automatic weapons fire could be heard before and after the blast which occurred a few blocks from Firdous Square, the roundabout in central Baghdad where Iraqis toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003. [AP]](xin_51030210082639013121.jpg)
Firemen try to put out flames after a garbage
truck exploded at dawn near a hotel used by western contractors in central
Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, March 9, 2005.[AP] | The U.S. Embassy said 30 Americans were among 40 people wounded in the blast.
No Americans were killed. In an Internet statement, al-Qaida in Iraq purportedly
claimed responsibility for the attack on the Sadeer hotel, calling it the "hotel
of the Jews."
While Sunni Arab insurgents have repeatedly targeted Westerners in Iraq,
Shiite Muslims, top Iraqi officials and civil servants, even Muslim women are no
longer safe.
Decapitated bodies of women have begun turning up in recent weeks, a note
with the word "collaborator" usually pinned to their chests. Three women were
gunned down Tuesday in one of Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods for being alleged
collaborators. And in the northern city of Kirkuk, a woman identified as Nawal
Mohammed, who worked with U.S. forces, was killed in a drive-by shooting, police
said.
The decomposed bodies were found Tuesday after reports of their stench
reached authorities.
Twenty-six of the dead were discovered in a field near Rumana, a village 12
miles east of the western city of Qaim, near the Syrian border. Each body was
riddled with bullets. The dead were found wearing civilian clothes and one was a
woman, police Capt. Muzahim al-Karbouli said.
The other site was south of Baghdad in Latifiya, where Iraqi troops found 15
headless bodies in a building at an abandoned army base, Defense Ministry Capt.
Sabah Yassin said.
The bodies included 10 men, three women and two children. Their identities,
like the others found in western Iraq, were not known, but insurgents may have
viewed them or their relatives as collaborators.
Yassin said some of men found dead in Latifiya were thought to have been part
of a group of Iraqi soldiers who were kidnapped by insurgents two weeks ago.
The gruesome discoveries were among 58 new killings in Iraq announced
Wednesday, including the death of a U.S. soldier in a Baghdad roadside bombing.
Iraq's interim planning minister, Mahdi al-Hafidh, a Shiite, narrowly escaped
death Wednesday after gunmen opened fire on his convoy in the capital. Two of
his bodyguards were killed and two others were wounded.
"I'm fine, just sorry about the death of the guards, who were still young,"
he told state-run Al-Iraqiya TV. "It is a part of the crisis that Iraq is
living, but we will keep going for the sake of Iraq, to get rid of terrorism and
build a democratic country."
Qataa Abdul Nabi, the director general of the Shiite Endowment, was shot to
death Tuesday as he drove home — the second high-ranking member of the Shiite
charity to be killed in a week.
A car bombing targeted an American checkpoint outside a base in Habaniyah, 50
miles west of Baghdad, and another exploded near U.S. troops close to Abu
Ghraib, just west of the capital.
No other details were available, and the U.S. military could not be reached
for comment. It was unclear if the dead U.S. soldier was killed in any of the
attacks. The U.S. military said only that a soldier was killed and another was
wounded by a bomb as they were patrolling around Baghdad.
As of Tuesday, at least 1,509 members of the U.S. military have died since
the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press
count. At least 1,149 died as a result of hostile action, according to the
Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians. The AP count is
five higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated at 10 a.m. EST
Tuesday.
In other violence:
_ Guerrillas struck a police patrol with a roadside bomb in the southern city
of Basra, killing two policeman and wounding three, Lt. Col. Karim Al-Zaydi
said.
_ Two police officers were killed and two others wounded in clashes with
insurgents in the northern city of Mosul.
Police said the attack on the Sadeer hotel began when insurgents wearing
police uniforms shot to death a guard at the Agriculture Ministry's gate,
allowing the truck to enter a compound the ministry shares with the hotel.
Guards fired on the vehicle and it exploded.
The explosion carved a hole in the parking lot that was at least 30 feet wide
and more than 10 feet deep. It shattered most windows in the hotel and set cars
on fire.
Al-Qaida in Iraq posted an Internet statement addressed to its leader,
Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claiming it carried out
the attack.
It said: "we have fulfilled our vow to take down the Jews and Christians." In
an alleged response on the same site, someone purporting to be al-Zarqawi
replied, "you have relieved us by killing the enemy of God. God bless you."
Another militant group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, purportedly posted an
Internet video showing what it said were two Sudanese hostages abducted in
Baghdad. The men identified themselves as Mohammed Hammad and Maher Attaya and
said they were drivers for a Turkish company working for U.S. forces. The
authenticity of the video could not be verified.
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