A suicide car bomber sped toward US soldiers as they gave candy to children and detonated his vehicle yesterday, killing up to 27 other people, US and Iraqi officials said. One US soldier and about a dozen children were among the dead.
At least 70 others, including three US soldiers, were injured in the attack, Iraqi and US officials said. It was the second major suicide bombing in Baghdad this week. A suicide bomber killed 25 people on Sunday at an army recruiting center.
The fireball from yesterday's blast also set a nearby house on fire, the US military said. The attack stunned the impoverished east Baghdad neighborhood of mostly Shiite Muslims and Christians. An elderly woman dressed in traditional black beat her chest in front of her house in grief.
The vehicle used in the attack was a brown Toyota Land Cruiser with a license plate from the southern city of Basra, police said.
Hospitals and police said between 11 and 13 children were killed. Authorities scrambled to compile an accurate count of the dead and injured.
"The explosion was mainly on the children," resident Abbas Ali Jassim said.
Following the attack, charred remains of an engine block wrapped in barbed wire lay in the street. A child's bicycle was crumpled beside the street, which was splattered with pools of blood.
At Kindi hospital, where many of the dead and injured were taken, one distraught woman swathed in black sat cross-legged outside the operating room.
"May God curse the mujahedeen and their leader," she cried as she pounded her own head in grief.
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