Baghdad bomber 'lures victims', killing scores

Last Update: Wednesday, September 14, 2005.
6:35pm (AEST)

suicide bomber has blown up his minibus after luring a crowd of men to the vehicle with promises of work in Baghdad, killing at least 114 people and wounding 156, police and officials say.

Witnesses said the blast in the mostly Shiite district of Kadhimiya tore through a group of labourers waiting at the roadside in the hope of finding jobs for the day.

"We gathered and suddenly a car blew up and turned the area into fire and dust and darkness," said Hadi, one of the workers who survived the attack.

An Interior Ministry source said the bomber had pulled up in the minibus and called to a group of men to gather around, saying he was looking for workers. He then detonated his explosives.

One source said up to 220 kilos of explosives might have been used in the bomb.

"There were dozens and dozens of people around the car when it blew up," said Satah Jihad, a 40-year-old shopkeeper.

Many of the day labourers who regularly gather on the square come from poor Shiite areas in the south of the country, he suggested.

Bodies lay in the street beside burned-out cars, witnesses said.

Some used wooden carts to haul away the dead.

Up to 50 small shops and dozens of cars were damaged in the explosion and firemen found it difficult to reach the scene of the carnage because cars were blocking nearby streets.

The area is close to the bridge where some 1,000 people died on August 31 in a mass stampede during a Shiite religious commemoration.

Iraqi Government officials have accused Sunni Arab militants of attacking majority Shiites, who were swept to power in January elections, in a bid to spark a civil war.

The carnage followed late-night killings in the town of Taji, just north of the capital, where gunmen dragged 17 people out of their homes and shot them, police said.

-Reuters

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