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October 28, 2003, Scotsman BAGHDAD CARNAGE KILLS 35 Gethin Chamberlain And Colin Freeman FOREIGN terrorists were yesterday blamed for a series of bomb blasts which ripped through central Baghdad, killing at least 35 people and injuring hundreds more in the worst day of violence in the Iraqi capital since the end of the war. Suicide bombers chose the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to launch the attacks, which appeared to have been co-ordinated to cause maximum impact. The bombers commandeered an ambulance and a police car to get close enough to two of their targets, the explosions tearing apart the International Red Cross headquarters and three police stations. An attack on a fourth police station was thwarted when police captured the bomber before he could detonate his explosives. US officials said the attacks bore the hallmarks of fighters originating outside Iraq and Dr Magnus Ranstorp, one of Britain's leading experts on terrorism, told The Scotsman there was now incontrovertible evidence that foreign fighters, including al-Qaeda, had moved into Iraq from neighbouring countries and were behind a number of the recent major attacks. Intelligence sources say al-Qaeda members and sympathisers have entered Iraq from Syria and Saudi Arabia and Palestinian fighters have travelled to the country from refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon. Dr Ranstorp said the degree of professionalism and intelligence expertise involved in organising the attacks pointed to the involvement of an outside organisation. His warning came as US forces in Baghdad said the terrorist held for the failed fourth attack had a Syrian passport when he was captured by Iraqi police. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, condemned the strikes as "evil and wicked" and the US president, George Bush, vowed to hunt down the perpetrators. "There are terrorists in Iraq who are willing to kill anybody in order to stop our progress," he said. "The more success we have on the ground, the more these killers will react - and our job is to find them and bring them to justice." US Brigadier General Mark Hertling said yesterday's attacks - a day after a rocket attack on Baghdad's Al Rashid Hotel, where the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, was staying - did not appear to be the work of Saddam loyalists and may have come from forces originating outside Iraq. He added: "There are intelligence indicators that these attacks seem to have the mode of operations of foreign fighters." The string of bombings left streetscapes of bloody, broken bodies, twisted wreckage and Iraqis unnerved by an apparently escalating underground war against the US occupation. "We feel helpless when see this," said an Iraqi doctor outside the offices of the Red Cross, which had already reduced its Baghdad staff after a car bomb at the UN headquarters killed 23 people in August. Sir Nicholas Young, chief executive of the British Red Cross, last night said the agency may be forced to pull out of Baghdad. He added: "We will have to consider the situation very carefully. There is a huge amount of work that we desperately want to carry on doing, but ultimately a dead Red Cross worker isn't any use to Iraq." Yesterday's dead included at least eight Iraqi policemen and one US soldier. Of the 230-plus injured, more than 60 were Iraqi police officers. The first explosion was at around 8: 30am when a police car, commandeered for the suicide mission and driven by a man in police uniform, drove into the courtyard of the al-Baya police station in the southern district of ad-Doura. The blast killed 15, including one US soldier. Five minutes later, the bombers used an ambulance to hit the city-centre headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross. A witness, Ghani Khadim, said: "I saw this ambulance driving up toward the Red Cross, and then suddenly it blew up." The explosion blew a five-yard-wide crater in the road and knocked down a 40ft section of the ICRC's sandbag-backed front wall, demolished a dozen nearby cars and shattered a water main, flooding the streets. The building's interior was wrecked - a scene of shattered glass, doors blown off their hinges, toppled bookcases and collapsed ceilings. More than 100 staff would normally have been inside, but their starting-time had been pushed back to 9am because of Ramadan, and probably only one-quarter of the normal staff was present. Red Cross headquarters in Geneva said 12 people were killed. They included two staff members, thought to be security guards, while all the other casualties were apparently passers-by. Twenty minutes later, another car bomber detonated his explosives-packed vehicle at a police station near a marketplace in the al-Shaab district of north Baghdad, killing eight people and injuring many. Then 20 minutes later, the fourth suicide bomber struck in southwest Baghdad, at the al-Khudra police station, destroying the front of the building.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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