7 killed, dozens hurt in Baghdad blast By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

7 killed, dozens hurt in Baghdad blast By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 45 minutes ago



BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded in northern Baghdad on Saturday, killing seven passers-by and wounding dozens of others in an apparent sectarian attack near the capital's most important Shiite shrine.

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The attack in Kazimiyah came even as parts of Baghdad were shut down to vehicular traffic in an effort to protect Shiite pilgrims leaving for an annual religious commemoration in the southern city of Karbala next week.

The curbs on traffic were imposed late Friday and were expected to continue through the weekend to allow the pilgrims safe passage on their trek to celebrate the birthday of the "Hidden Imam," a 9th century religious figure who devout Shiites believe will return to Earth to usher in the rule of peace.

Just after noon, a bomb hidden in a parked car exploded in busy Oruba Square about 500 yards from the shrine of Imam Musa Kadhim, another revered Shiite figure.

A medic at the local hospital said seven people were killed in the explosion and 30 others were wounded.

No group claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell on Sunni religious extremists who consider Shiites as heretics and collaborators with the Americans.

Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed two insurgents and arrested seven others Friday during raids on two villages along the road linking Baghdad with the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police Col. Abbas Mohammed said.

Three stolen cars believed to be intended to be used for car bombs, as well as ammunition and bomb-making materials were also seized, Mohammed said. There were no reports of U.S. or Iraqi casualties, he said.

Iraqi security forces also killed a man suspected of links to the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, Mohammed said. Ten other al-Qaida suspects were arrested in the Friday raid which occurred in a village northeast of Baghdad.

Also Friday, U.S. helicopters blasted rooftops in a Shiite neighborhood of north Baghdad in a gunfight that left eight Shiite gunmen dead, according to the U.S. military's count. Shiites claimed some civilians died and radicals castigated Iraq's Shiite-dominated government as being too weak to rein in the Americans.

The U.S. military said the battle in Baghdad erupted when a U.S. Army patrol came under fire shortly after midnight from gunmen on rooftops in Shula, a rundown Shiite neighborhood that is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Troops called in attack helicopters, which raked the rooftops with automatic weapons fire, a U.S. spokesman, Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, said.

Bleichwehl said all the dead had been "identified as hostile."

But Iraqi police and hospital officials said the dead included a woman and a young boy. Sixteen other people were wounded, including four women and three boys in their early teens who had been sleeping on the roofs to escape the summer heat, an official at Noor Hospital in Shula said.

The Iraqi officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release such information.

In Najaf, the leader of the pro-Sadr bloc in parliament, Nasser al-Rubaie, claimed 21 civilians were killed in Shula. He blamed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, saying it is "weak and can do nothing in the face of the occupation."

The verbal barrage by Shiites comes as al-Maliki is drawing increasing criticism in the United States over his government's inability to forge unity among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

A report released Thursday by U.S. intelligence agencies predicted more turmoil over the next six to 12 months because Iraqi political leaders "remain unable to govern effectively."