|
Eight Iraqis killed in Baghdad bombing
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-01 19:54
A bomb exploded alongside a group of Iraqi men waiting for work in eastern
Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least eight and wounding more than 50, as a new
video from kidnappers threatened to kill two German hostages if Germany fails to
stop cooperating with the Iraqi government.
Witnesses said a man placed a bag full of explosives near a cart that sold
tea to the workers as they waited for daily construction jobs, said Col. Ahmed
Abboud, chief of police in the New Baghdad area where the explosion occurred.
"The people did not suspect him when he first came with the bag because all
workers carry their food in bags," Abboud told The Associated Press.
The attack happened around 7 a.m. at an intersection crowded with bystanders
near a Sunni Muslim mosque. Abboud and another police official, Capt. Mohammed
Jassim Jaber, said at least eight people were killed and more than 50 wounded.
Also Wednesday, U.S. troops fired on an approaching Canadian Embassy convoy
that failed to obey signals to stop in the heavily fortified Green Zone in
Baghdad, but there were no injuries, said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry
Johnson. A Canadian Embassy spokeswoman in Jordan said four Canadian diplomats
were in one of the vehicles, including the charge d'affairs.
In a series of apparent sectarian killings Tuesday, police found the bodies
of 16 handcuffed and blindfolded young men around Baghdad, and gunmen shot dead
the wife and two sons of a Sunni Arab cleric north of the capital. A roadside
bomb also killed a British soldier in southern Iraq.
Kidnappers threatened to kill Thomas Nitzschke and Rene Braeunlich if Germany
does not close its embassy in Iraq, withdraw all the German companies from Iraq
and stop cooperating with the Iraqi government within three days.
The videotape aired on Al-Jazeera television showed Braeunlich speaking and
clasping his hands in front of him as if begging. No audio was heard.
The two men were abducted last week in the northern industrial city of Beiji.
|
