Baghdad explosion kills 47, wounds 100

Baghdad explosion kills 47, wounds 100
Iraqis blame rocket attacks; U.S. teams say it was natural gas.

Published Monday, August 14, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Residents dug through wrecked buildings and swept glass off the streets today in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood devastated by explosions that killed at least 47 people. Iraqis blamed bombs, but U.S. military experts pointed to a natural-gas explosion.

U.S. ordnance teams went to the Zafraniyah neighborhood and found "no evidence" of anything other than a "significant gas explosion" last night followed by subsequent blasts related to a gas leak, the U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, said.

"If in fact there had been a hole in the ground, there would be some residue from a Katyusha rocket if one had been fired there," he told reporters.

Iraqi officials insisted the damage was caused by car bombs and a rocket barrage fired from Dora, a mostly Sunni district - evidence that sectarian violence roiling the capital shows no sign of stopping despite an additional 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops soldiers rushed in to enforce peace.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office said in a statement that the attack started with a number of Katyusha rockets falling on a building followed by a car bomb, more rockets on a post office, a motorcycle bomb near a library and mortar rounds near an Armenian church. The statement said 47 people were killed and 100 injured.

"The terrorists planned this ugly crime so that it would inflict maximum harm on innocent civilians, and this is proof of their deep-rooted hatred for Iraq and their attempt to incite sectarianism," al-Maliki said.

Huge slabs of concrete that once were ceilings in an apartment building lay atop each other in a heap at one spot.

"This is terrorism against the whole nation," said Ali al-Sayedi, a municipal council member.

A pedestrian bridge, ripped off its mooring, crushed a car underneath. The roof of a house displayed a wide hole, exposing the steel reinforcing rods bent inwards. The blackened wreckage of an overturned car lay nearby.

The explosions last night reinforced worries about the Sunni-Shiite violence that American officials consider the greatest threat to Iraq’s stability more than three years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime.