Posted on 04/22/2004 2:25:55 PM PDT by me_newswire
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Wednesday, April 21 Three car bombs exploded in front of Iraqi police stations in the southern city of Basra on Wednesday morning, killing more than three dozen people and wounding more than 70, according to initial reports from the police and witnesses.
A fourth explosion hit a police station in the nearby town of Zubeir, according to a witness in one of Basras main hospitals, who was speaking to medics as they brought in people wounded in the blast.
One of the blasts in Basra hit a school bus during the morning rush hour, when school buses are circulating and commuters are on their way to work, according to Iraqi witnesses. Traffic was heavy around the police stations, situated in the center of the city.
Bodies of schoolchildren were burning inside the bus. Iraqis helped pick up bodies of victims as ambulances wailed to the scene.
Hospital workers brought in burned corpses to the city's hospitals. Witnesses counted 37 dead and 75 wounded at two of Basras hospitals, but the death toll was expected to rise as figures were compiled. Basras police chief was expected to announce officials figures later on Wednesday.
Hisham Halawa, a spokesman for British forces in Basra, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera that British forces were unable to reach at least two of the police stations. Al Jazeera, quoting its own reporter in the city, said angry Iraqis pelted the British forces with rocks.
He had no exact figures for the number of killed and wounded, but an emergency physician at Basra's main hospital, Ali Hussein, told The Associated Press that more than 40 people were killed and at least 200 injured.
It was not clear who was behind the blasts. Iraqi police stations have been frequently struck by attackers who see them as allied to American-led occupation forces.
The last such large scale attack in Iraq was on March 17, when a car bomb blasted the front of the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad, killing at least 27 people.
Officer Halawa said that there were some Iraqi forces among the wounded, but most of the victims were civilians.
Al Jazeera broadcast footage of a charred corpse loaded onto a pickup truck, and the smoldering skeleton of the school bus. Iraqi women shrieked and wailed at the scene.
The attacks in Basra came a day after insurgents fired 12 mortar rounds into the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad on Tuesday, striking a camp in the sprawling interior where many of the 7,600 Iraqi political detainees are being held by the Americans. United States military officials said that 22 prisoners had been killed and 92 had been wounded.
The attack was part of a pattern of insurgent attacks on the prison, west of Baghdad. The attack sent American officials scurrying for explanations. One theory was that insurgents were seeking to create chaos to help other detainees escape. Another possibility was that the attackers were seeking to undermine Iraqis' already shaky confidence in the occupation authority's ability to maintain control.
That confidence has plunged after a month of turmoil, first in fighting at the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, then in the uprising led by a rebel Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, in Baghdad and across a swath of central and southern Iraq. Many Iraqis, and even some American officials, have wondered at the worst moments whether the troops here would lose control.
Events have stabilized somewhat, but American officials acknowledge that the situation remains volatile, dependent in large part on what happens in Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, and in Kufa and Najaf, adjacent cities along the Euphrates where Mr. Sadr has made his stand. In Falluja, events on Tuesday pointed to an American effort to begin putting into effect a deal reached on Monday between civic leaders, senior American officials and Marine commanders. As a first step toward a permanent cease-fire, 50 families who had fled were allowed to return.
Reuters on Wednesday quoted residents in Falluja as saying that clashes erupted between American forces and Iraqi insurgents, killing six civilians.
Hopes that Falluja could become a model of ``a city that understands what democracy is,'' as Dan Senor, a spokesman for the American-led administration said at a briefing, remained slim.
The American goal, defined in the Monday agreement, is complete disarmament by Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters in Falluja. There has been no sign that civic leaders have the power to do that. [About 35 Iraqi insurgents attacked American marines in northern Fallujah just after daybreak on Wednesday, setting off a heavy gunbattle, The Associated Press reported.]
A resumption of hostilities at Kufa and Najaf would risk igniting mobs in Sadr City, the Baghdad slum where Mr. Sadr is a hero to many.
On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, field commander of United States forces in Iraq, told troops at Camp Duke, 13 miles northwest of Najaf, that there that he had ordered a phased pullback from the area to avoid bloodshed in Najaf. Although Iraq's most powerful Shiite clerics have pressured Mr. Sadr to return control of Najaf to Iraqi police and civil defense units, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential religious figure, has warned United States commanders that entering the city is a ``red line'' not to be crossed.
``The problem of Sadr is bigger than Sadr,'' General Sanchez told the American soldiers, according to a report by a Reuters correspondent embedded with the task force. ``It is the whole Shiite community and the holy shrine.''
He said that American forces had ``just about eliminated'' Mr. Sadr's influence elsewhere in southern Iraq, but said a major firefight that endangered holy shrines would ``create a backlash.''
[The Associated Press reported that the Dominican Republic will pull its troops out of Iraq early, in the next few weeks, quoting Gen. Jose Miguel Soto Jimenez. The announcement came just two days after President Hipolito Mejia pledged to keep the country's 302 troops in Iraq until their one-year committment ended in August.]
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Bodies Identified
HOUSTON, April 20 (AP) Three of four bodies found near an attack on a fuel convoy in Iraq earlier this month were contract workers for Halliburton Co., the company said in a statement Tuesday.
They were identified as Stephen Hulett, 48, of Manistee, Mich.; Jack Montague, 52, of Pittsburg, Ill.; and Jeffery Parker, 45, of Lake Charles, La.--
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