World

Deadly Blast At Iraq Mosque

January 10, 2004 / 11:26 AM EST / CBS/AP

An explosion ripped through a busy street Friday as worshippers streamed out of a Shiite Muslim mosque after midday prayers in the central town of Baqouba, killing at least two people and wounding dozens of others, doctors and officials said.

The blast went off near the Sadiq Mohammed mosque in the religiously mixed city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad in an area dominated by Sunnis. The explosion was caused by a gas cylinder, an Iraqi police lieutenant and the mosque owner said. It was unclear if it was rigged as a bomb or exploded by accident.

A police investigator said officers discovered a car bomb in front of another Shiite mosque 1½ miles away and that it appeared a coordinated attack. The investigator said the car was rigged with three artillery shells and 330 pounds of TNT but fault wiring prevented it from going off.

In other developments:

U.S. forces detained 12 suspected Iraqi insurgents in Tikrit in one of the biggest raids since the fall of Baghdad.

Two blasts also shook central Baghdad shortly after dawn Friday, and security guards said several rockets struck a hotel used by Western contract workers. Windows were shattered and there was other minor damage but no casualties.

The U.S. military has begun a rotation of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan that amounts to the largest movement of American troops in decades. The changes present an enormous logistics and security challenge as approximately 130,000 troops in Iraq head home over the next four months, to be replaced by a more mobile, less heavily armed force of about 110,000.

Secretary of State Colin Powell insists that Iraq had had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed by force. He said he had "not seen a smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection" of ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, "but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

A Carnegie Endowment report says the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" a weapons threat from Iraq, and calls for U.S. strategy should be revised to eliminate the policy of unilateral preventive war.

The U.S. Army says a military team has arrived in Iraq to advise ground commanders on ways to cope with the homemade bombs that insurgents have detonated along roads used by U.S. convoys over the past several months, often killing or maiming soldiers. The team is also doing forensic studies of actual detonated explosives and consulting with commanders on potential improved technical means of defeating these low-tech, improvised bombs.

So far the Iraq conflict has cost the lives of 494 American service members. Most of the deaths - both combat and non-combat - have occurred since President Bush declared an end to major fighting on May 1.

In Baqouba, footage from Associated Press Television News showed men pulling sheets over two bodies lying in the street as women in black robes wailed. Wounded people wandered in a daze. One car was set ablaze and other blackened cars were covered with debris from the blast.

Dr. Ahmed Ali of the Baqouba General Hospital said five people were killed and 37 wounded. A police lieutenant said there were four dead and 36 wounded. A U.S. military spokeswoman, Maj. Josslyn Aberle, put the toll at two dead and two wounded.

Attacks on Shiite and Sunni Muslim mosques have increased in recent weeks, raising tensions between the two communities as they compete for influence in post-Saddam Iraq. An upsurge in sectarian violence could undermine U.S. efforts to put together a democratic government in Iraq, where the Shiite majority was oppressed for decades under Saddam's mainly Sunni regime.

Attacks on mosques have increased in recent months. In the most serious attack, a car bomb killed at least 80 people, including Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, at a Shiite shrine in the holy city of Najaf in August.

In the raids in Tikrit, more than 300 soldiers swept through the hometown of Saddam Hussein just before midnight Thursday in a search for 18 men and teenagers suspected in anti-U.S. attacks, including the Oct. 1 killing of a female American soldier.

In the four-hour operation, the troops took 30 Iraqis into custody, among them 12 of the 18 wanted people. The other detainees were believed to have links to those suspected in the attacks, officials said.

Two of the captured men were suspected of planting a roadside bomb that killed Pfc. Analaura Esparza Gutierrez, 21, of Houston, on Oct. 1.

The operation came hours after a Black Hawk medevac helicopter crashed near Fallujah, killing all nine soldiers aboard, and a C-5 transport plane limped safely back to the Baghdad airport after being struck by insurgent fire.

The Black Hawk, which was clearly marked with a red cross, went down Thursday about four miles south of Fallujah, a stronghold of the anti-American insurgency, according to the 82nd Airborne Division. Witnesses said it was hit by a rocket, but U.S. officials said the cause was unknown.

A farmer who lives in the area, Mohammed Ahmed al-Jamali, said he heard the distinctive whoosh of a rocket and saw the helicopter with damage to its tail. The 27-year-old said he rushed to the scene but found everyone dead.

Twice before, American helicopters have gone down near Fallujah, a city 35 miles west of Baghdad.

In Thursday's close call at Baghdad International Airport, a transport plane carrying 63 people declared an in-flight emergency and landed safely shortly after takeoff, the Air Force said.

It said initial information indicated the engine exploded as a result of "hostile action from the ground." No one was injured.