A bomb left in a plastic bag exploded on Wednesday near Baghdad’s most important Shiite shrine, killing seven people and wounding 23, police said.
The blast occurred in the same neighborhood where an infant was rescued from a burning car the day before after an explosion killed his mother. The man who rescued the infant said the baby boy was handed over on Wednesday to his uncle.
Wednesday’s attack was part of a wave of violence that hit Iraq this week, primarily in Shiite areas of Baghdad.
PHOTO: AP
The uptick coincided with a five-hour visit on Tuesday by US President Barack Obama, who told US troops that “there is still a lot of work to do” in Iraq despite the new focus on the war in Afghanistan.
The bomb exploded in a pedestrian shopping area in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah, about 100m from the tomb of Imam Mousa al-Kazim — one of the 12 Shiite saints.
Just a day earlier in Kazimiyah, nine people were killed in a car bombing, including a mother who was riding in a taxi with her infant son. A salesman, Asad Raad, plucked the boy from the back seat of the burning car where he lay next to his dead mother.
No group has claimed responsibility for the recent blasts, but the US military blames al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni extremist group that has targeted Shiite civilians in the past.
Meanwhile, thousands of supporters of the anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr yesterday protested the occupation of Iraq, six years after the toppling of a Saddam Hussein statue symbolized the fall of his regime.
Crowds lined the streets leading to Firdos Square in Baghdad, where Saddam’s giant bronze sculpture was wrestled to the ground with the help of US Marines in 2003, an iconic image that signaled the end of his dictatorial rule.
Many of the demonstrators chanted “No no America, Yes Yes Iraq” as others carried placards adorned with pictures of Sadr, the radical Shiite leader who became a key figure and symbol of resistance after the US-led invasion.
Some of the protestors waded through mud to reach the head of the procession after Baghdad was hit by a rare bout of rain, which peaked during the morning demonstration.
Many of those gathered had camped out overnight or sheltered in nearby mosques, having travelled to the capital from Iraq’s mainly Shiite south.
“I came yesterday with about 500 of my friends to demonstrate against the occupation and demand its end and to call for the unity of the Iraqi people,” said Raad Saghir, 28, from Kut, 175km south of Baghdad.
The sixth anniversary of the US-led coalition’s invasion on March 20 saw Sadr supporters use that day’s Friday prayers to call for an end to the occupation. But Thursday’s protest was bigger in scale.
The red, white and black colors of the Iraqi flag were prominent as thousands of people swarmed the streets in a crowd that stretched back hundreds of meters.
“I came yesterday morning with about 100 Basra residents, to reject the occupation and ask for their withdrawal,” said Raad Muhsin, an unemployed 28-year-old from Iraq’s southern port city.
Sadr, currently believed to be in Iran, founded the feared Mehdi Army militia after Saddam’s fall, which was accused of kidnapping and killing Sunnis during the 2006 sectarian conflict that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war.
His movement, which draws broad support from poorer Shiites, has long been a staunch opponent of the US-led military presence in Iraq.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin