BAGHDAD, Iraq - A bomb strapped to a motorcycle exploded in the center of the
capital Thursday, killing at least 12 people and injuring 29, police said. At
least 13 other people were killed or found dead in various parts of the country.
The attack near Rusafi Square in the Rashid Street shopping area apparently
targeted fruit and vegetable vendors and commercial stalls, said police Lt.
Ahmed Mohammed Ali. He said the bomb was hidden in a parked motorcycle.
Local Iraqis try to clean the street littered with bomb debris
after a motorcycle exploded, Thursday afternoon, Aug. 3, 2006, in Baghdad, Iraq.
A bomb was strapped to a motorcycle and exploded near street vendors in the
center of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people and injuring 29, police said.
Several shops caught fire and many victims were driven to hospitals in
private cars as ambulances were obstructed by concrete and razor-wire
roadblocks.
The attack occurred as Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso was visiting
Baghdad on a surprise trip. At a news conference, he announced a $29 million
loan for the reconstruction of Iraq.
The road to recovery for Iraq's economy has been a slow one because of almost
daily bombings, shootings, abductions and assassinations blamed on sectarian
divisions between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis.
On Thursday, gunmen shot to death four people in separate incidents in
Baghdad, Amarah, Mosul and Basra, police said. The bodies of nine men were found
floating in separate places in the Tigris River, police and morgue officials
said. At least two of the bodies were blindfolded, bound and shot.
According to figures compiled from Iraqi security and health department
figures, more than 1,000 civilians, 135 members of security forces and 143
insurgents were killed nationwide in July. In addition, 1,800 civilians were
injured.
Hundreds of followers of a radical Shiite cleric left a southern Iraqi city
to join a rally in the capital condemning Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Muqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand anti-US cleric who commands a large militia, has
called on his followers from around the country to congregate in Baghdad on
Friday after the weekly prayers. The rally, scheduled to be held in the Shiite
slum of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, will show support for the Shiite Lebanese
guerrilla group Hezbollah in its fight against Israel.
Some 20 buses, accompanied by police vehicles, left from the southern city of
Basra, carrying young men, mostly unarmed members of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army
militia. Many were draped in the white shrouds that Muslims use to wrap their
dead - a symbol of their willingness to die for Lebanon.
The buses were plastered with pictures of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan
Nasrallah, who has assumed a hero status in the Arab world. The men waved the
yellow flags of Hezbollah and carried banners that read "Here we are Lebanon."
Al-Sadr is one of the most influential Shiite leaders in Iraq. His Sadr
Movement party is the second biggest component of the Shiite alliance in Iraq's
unity government, which includes Sunnis and Kurds.
A confidential report from Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq, William
Patey, warned that the country is sliding toward civil war and is likely to
divide eventually along ethnic lines, according to a British Broadcasting Corp.
report Thursday.
Patey sent the memo to Prime Minister Tony Blair, Foreign Secretary Margaret
Beckett and other leading legislators and military commanders, BBC reported.
It said Patey also warned that to avoid a descent into civil war, there must
be greater effort directed at policing militia groups, including al-Sadr's Mahdi
Army, which he said could develop into "a state within a state," as Hezbollah
has done in Lebanon.
On Wednesday, sectarian and political violence claimed at least 53 lives,
including 11 young soccer players and spectators who died when two bombs
exploded in a field in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. More than 70 people
were killed on Tuesday.
The surge in sectarian violence has prompted the US command to send at least
3,700 American soldiers from the northern city of Mosul to reclaim the capital's
streets from Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, rogue police, criminals and
freelance gunmen.
US officials have been pressing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, to
disband the Shiite militias and make overtures to Sunni insurgent groups.
However, the militias draw strength from the disorder they help create
because many Iraqis are losing confidence in the police and army -
preferring to rely on gunmen from their own sect for protection.
