Smoke rises above the scene of dual explosions Thursday near an Iraqi police headquarters in Baghdad. (Muhannad Fala'ah / Getty Images.)
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two car bombs ripped through a crowded street Thursday in front of an Interior Ministry office in central Baghdad, killing 18 people and wounding some three dozen others. The death toll from Thursday’s twin car bombs was the highest from an explosion since March 10, when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shiite mosque during a funeral. The force of the attack threw people to the ground, and thick, black smoke billowed over the city.
- Abdullah Hussein Zamel was cleaning tables at a local restaurant near the heavily fortified Green Zone (The Green Zone is where the Occupying American Forces have established their bases) when the blast shattered the windows. “I went outside and saw dead and injured people,” he said. “After that, I heard police open heavy fire on a second car.”
- Interior Ministry official, Capt. Ahmed Ismael, said the first two blasts killed 18 and wounded 36. One government worker said five garbage collectors he was supervising were among the dead.
Al-Qaida in Iraq said it carried out the country’s bloodiest explosion in a little over a month, detailing the third straight day of large attacks claimed by the terror group. In a statement posted on the Internet, al-Qaida in Iraq, headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said Thursday’s bombings targeted a patrol outside the office of Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, who is in charge of the nation’s police. The claim couldn’t be independently verified.
- Militant group Ansar al-Sunnah claimed responsibility for a recent attack, saying in an Internet posting that its “knights of Islam” attacked “renegade policemen doing their morning training.” Ansar al-Sunnah also said it had teamed up with Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq for an attack earlier this week in Kirkuk — an unusual mention of cooperation among Iraq’s disparate and sometimes competing militant groups.
- On Tuesday, the group said it was responsible for bloody clashes with U.S. soldiers in the Syrian border town of Qaim, and on Wednesday it claimed an attack on a U.S. convoy that killed five Iraqis and injured four U.S. contract workers on Baghdad’s infamous airport road. None of the claims could be verified.
- In Mahawil, 50 miles south of Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew himself up near an Iraqi police checkpoint, killing four policemen and wounding six others, the Polish-led military force said in a statement.
- There were other bloody battles Thursday across the country, mostly targeting Iraqi security forces being groomed to eventually take over form U.S. troops.
- Seven gunmen riding in two vehicles fired on the police station just south of Kirkuk shortly after dawn, killing five police officers and one civilian, police Brig. Sarhat Qadir said.
