Attack On Iraqi Laborers Kills Dozens
Suspected insurgents set off two bombs in a main square of central Baghdad where scores of Iraqis were waiting for jobs as day laborers on Tuesday, killing at least 63 people and wounding more than 200.
It was just after 7 a.m. local time when hundreds of Iraqis gathered in a midtown market to sign up for work, reports CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston. An eyewitness says a driver pulled up to the area asking for day laborers. As eager workers surged forward, the driver detonated a bomb. A hundred feet away, almost simultaneously, another bomb went off in a parked car, Pinkston reports.
Meanwhile, five more U.S. troops have died in Iraq, including three Marines killed in combat in volatile Anbar province, the U.S. command said Tuesday. The three Marines assigned to 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing died Monday of wounds sustained fighting insurgents, according to a statement.
The U.S. military said those killed were not linked to a hard landing Monday by a Marine helicopter in Anbar. At least 18 people were injured in that incident but hostile fire did not appear to be the cause, the military said.
The carefully coordinated attacks at Tayaran Square shattered windows in store fronts, left craters and blood stains in the road, and set fire to about 10 other cars.
Most of the victims were Shiites from poor areas of the capital such as Sadr City, government spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Ghani said.
"In the first explosion, I saw people falling over, some of them blown apart. When the other bomb went off seconds later, it slammed me into a wall of my store and I fainted," said Khalil Ibrahim, 41, a shop owner. He was interviewed at a local hospital where he had been rushed to be treated for shrapnel wounds to his head and back.
An overworked Al Kindi Hospital looked like a M.A.S.H. unit, Pinkston reports.
In other developments:
When the Baghdad attack occurred, police at a nearby checkpoint fired random shots in several directions, but residents soon rushed to the devastated area to see if friends or relatives had been killed or wounded.
In one area, mangled bodies were piled up at the side of the road and partially covered with paper. Two Iraqi men sat on a nearby sidewalk crying and sometimes covering their faces with their hands.
"The driver of the minibus lured the people to hire them as laborers, and after they gathered he detonated the vehicle," said another witness, Ali Hussein. Taking hold of an older man who was walking by in a daze with a bloody bandage tied around his head, Hussein said: "Look at this injured man. He comes from a big family."
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a member of Iraq's Shiite majority, blamed the attack on Saddamists and Sunni extremists.
"We condemn this horrible crime and Iraq's security forces will chase the criminals and present them to the justice," he said in a statement.
In a speech in the legislature, Parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, said: "Today, there was a massacre, the kind that Iraqis are used to every morning." He said the attack targeted poor people who were trying to feed their families, "turning them into pieces of flesh. God's curse upon those who are behind this."
He urged the deeply divided legislature of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds "to find a solution" to Iraq's many problems.
In Baghdad, where many people are unemployed, scores of Iraqis gather in the square early in the morning to wait for minibuses or private cars that stop by and hire them for the day as construction workers, cleaners or painters. Nearby, small stands are set up to sell the laborers a breakfast of tea and egg sandwiches.
Tayaran Square is located near several government ministries and a bridge that crosses the Tigris River to the Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the U.S. and British embassies are located.
About one mile away, two roadside bombs targeting Iraqi police patrols also exploded about 15 minutes apart, wounding two policemen and seven Iraqi civilians, said police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani.
Both loud explosions could be heard in Tayaran Square.
On Monday, at least 66 people were killed or found dead in the Baghdad area and northern Iraq. They included 46 men who were bound, blindfolded and shot to death in the capital — the latest apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
A Marine helicopter also made a hard landing in a remote desert area of Anbar province, injuring 18 people, the third U.S. aircraft to go down in the insurgent stronghold in two weeks.
The U.S. military announced that three American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing north of the capital on Sunday, putting December on track to be one of the deadliest months of the war. At least 2,934 members of the U.S. military have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The military relies heavily on air travel to transport troops and ferry officials and journalists to remote locations and to avoid the dangers of roadside bombs planted by insurgents.
The CH-53E Super Stallion, the U.S. military's largest helicopter, was conducting a routine passenger and cargo flight with 21 people on board when it went down about noon Monday, the U.S. command said, adding that hostile fire did not appear to be the cause.
Nine of the 18 injured were treated and returned to duty, it said. The military did not give the exact location where the hard landing occurred, saying recovery efforts were under way.