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Suicide attack kills eight, injures 36 in Iraq

Iraqis pray over the bodies of people killed yesterday in a US airstrike in Ishaqi, 80km northwest of Baghdad. Locals say civilians were killed in the air raid, while the US military said they killed 20 al-Qaeda terrorists. PHOTO: AFP

A suicide car bomb exploded near a revered shrine in one of Iraq's holiest Shiite cities yesterday, killing eight people and wounding 36, police said, in an apparent attempt by Sunni Arab insurgents to cause another spike in Iraq's sectarian violence.

Tensions between Sunnis and the US-led coalition also rose yesterday when the Association of Muslim Scholars and the country's largest Sunni political party condemned a deadly US military attack in a Sunni-dominated area northwest of Baghdad. The US command has said Friday's raid and airstrike killed 20 insurgents, but the association and the Iraqi Islamic Party joined a village mayor who alleged that the attack killed civilians, including women and children.

Yesterday morning, about 1,000 residents of al-Ishaqi village in the volatile province of Salahuddin held a funeral for the 19 civilians they say were killed in the US attack, shouting slogans such as "Down with the occupiers," "Long live the resistance," and "There is no God but Allah."

The suicide car bomb exploded at 10:30am outside the al-Abbas shrine in Karbala, 80km south of Baghdad, said Rahman Meshawi, the city's police spokesman, who provided the casualty totals.

Karbala is considered Iraq's second holiest Shiite city after Najaf, which is 70km to the southeast. Shiites make pilgrimages to both locations and bury their dead in large cemeteries there.

During the Iraq war, a main goal of Sunni Arab insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq has been to spark sectarian violence by attacking sites considered holy by the country's Shiite majority.

On Feb. 23, at least 136 Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence a day after an explosion destroyed the dome of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, 95km north of Baghdad.

On March 2, 2004, coordinated suicide bombings, mortar attacks and planted explosives struck Shiite shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing at least 181 Iraqis and wounding 573.

Attacks by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, and revenge killings in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas of cities such as Baghdad, often kill scores of Iraqis a day now.

On Friday night, a mortar attack by suspected Sunni insurgents on a poor Shiite neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad killed 25 people, police said.

The US military also announced that roadside bombs killed three US soldiers and wounded two in and around Baghdad, raising the war's US death toll to more than 2,920.

Friday's coalition attack was targeting al-Qaeda-linked militants in a predominantly Sunni area near Lake Tharthar in Salahuddin Province northwest of Baghdad, the US command said.

Ground forces returned fire when they were attacked while searching buildings, killing two insurgents, the US military said. Under continuing fire, the troops called in air support, killing 18 insurgents, the command said, adding that two women were among those killed.

"Al-Qaeda in Iraq has both men and women supporting and facilitating their operations unfortunately," it said.

Searching the area, the coalition forces found and destroyed several weapons caches, including AK-47s, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-personnel mines, explosives, blasting caps and suicide vests, the command said.

Amir Fayadh, the mayor of the al-Ishaqi Village, and local police disputed the claim that the strike only killed insurgents, alleging that 19 civilians were among the dead. Fayadh said seven of those were women and eight were children.

Fayadh acknowledged yesterday that initial casualty reports from the scene had been too high, but he and Captain Mahmoud al-Daraji confirmed the final death toll of eight children, seven women and four men.

The residents holding yesterday's emotional funeral carried 19 coffins to a local cemetery on the rooftops of vehicles taking part in a procession.

On Friday, AP Television News video showed more than a dozen charred and bloody bodies, some of which appeared almost mummified with their faces unrecognizable. Angry villagers gathered around several of the bodies, which were covered in colorful wool blankets and laid out on the ground near the concrete rubble left by the devastated houses in the remote desert area.
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