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Raid kills three civilians

Residents yesterday inspect the site of Saturday's bombing attacks in downtown Baghdad. Three car bombs struck a food market in a predominantly Shiite area in the center of the city, killing at least 51 people a day after a US-led raid against Sunni insurgents in a nearby neighborhood. PHOTO: AP

US soldiers destroyed two buildings being used by insurgents in a town in Anbar Province, killing six militants, two women and a boy believed to be under 2, the military said yesterday.

It was the latest of several recent raids during which women or children have been killed or wounded as US forces attacked insurgents in residential areas.

In some of the attacks, the US command accused the militants of using civilians as "human shields" or buildings as "safe houses."

Meanwhile, the death toll from Friday's triple car bombing at a packed food market in a predominantly Shiite area in central Baghdad rose to 53 civilians dead and 121 wounded, police Colonel Nabil Abdul Kadir said.

Three parked cars blew up nearly simultaneously as shoppers were buying vegetables and other items in the al-Sadriyah district.

The blasts sent clouds of black smoke over concrete high-rises in the area, which has narrow alleys that made it difficult for ambulances and fire trucks to navigate.

A cheese vendor who was wounded said the market was full of people shopping on their way home from work.

"We heard a big explosion from the western side of the area and the second from the eastern side. After one minute the third explosion took place near us," Ahmed Salman said from a hospital bed.

It was one of the worst incidents since a bombing and mortar attack killed 215 people and wounded more than 200 in the Shiite district of Sadr City in Baghdad on Nov. 23 amid increasing retaliatory attacks between Shiites and Sunnis.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the market attack, but it followed a Friday raid by Iraqi forces backed by US helicopters targeting Sunni insurgents in al-Fadhil, less than 1km away.

The Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq condemned that raid in a statement on Saturday that alleged six people were killed and 13 detained.

On Saturday night in the town of Karmah, coalition ground and air forces killed six insurgents while destroying two buildings that militants were using, the military said.

Searching through one of the destroyed buildings, coalition forces also found a weapons cache and the bodies of two women and a boy who was believed to be under 2 years old, the military said.

Three suspected insurgents also were detained.

Abdul-Hakim al-Dulaimi, director of the emergency room at Karmah Hospital, said 12 bodies were brought in yesterday morning, including nine Iraqi men, two women in their 40s and a three-year-old boy.

He said seven wounded Iraqis were admitted. Police First Lieutenant Ahmed Ali and local council member Mohammed Daham said 13 wounded people also were treated at a nearby Jordanian field hospital at around the same time.

However, it was not known if these casualties were all the result of the US raid in Karmah.

The town, 80km west of Baghdad, is in the large area of western Iraq where many of the country's Sunni Arab insurgent groups operate.

"Coalition forces take precautions to mitigate risks to civilians while in pursuit of terrorists. However, terrorists continue to put innocent civilians in danger by operating among them," the US military statement said.

On Friday, near Taji, the US Air Force base just north of Baghdad, US soldiers killed one insurgent and wounded a woman in her 50s "who was being used as human shield by the terrorist," the US command said.

On Wednesday, two Iraqi women died when US forces backed by aircraft killed eight al-Qaeda insurgents during a raid near Baqubah, 60km northeast of Baghdad, the military said.

The day before, US soldiers fought with suspected insurgents in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, killing six Iraqis: one man and five girls, ages 7 months, 12, 14, 15 and 17, the US military command said.

The military quoted residents as saying the building that was attacked "was a known anti-Iraqi force safe house."
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