BAGHDAD — A terrorist detonated explosives strapped to his body yesterday, triggering a huge explosion at a gas station near a mosque south of Baghdad and killing at least 54 persons.
The attack capped a string of three major bombings over the past four days that killed at least 120.
Police Capt. Muthanna Khaled Ali and Dr. Adel Malallah of the Jumhuri General Hospital in Hillah, the provincial capital, said the gas station blast in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, killed 54 and wounded at least 82 others.
In Baghdad, the Interior Ministry put the casualty count at 51 dead and 82 wounded, but the report was believed based on a preliminary count.
Witnesses and police said a fuel tanker was moving slowly toward the pumps when an attacker ran to it and detonated his charge. A cluster of houses near the city-center gas station caught fire, the witnesses said. Gasoline stations in Iraq routinely include a number of small businesses selling tea, soft drinks and snacks and are often crowded with people.
Mussayib, a religiously mixed town along the Euphrates River, sits in the “triangle of death,” a description that relates to the large number of kidnappings and killings of Shi’ite Muslims traveling between Baghdad and the Shi’ite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.
The latest attack occurred as Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made the first visit to Iran by an Iraqi prime minister since dictator Saddam Hussein’s ouster. Mr. al-Jaafari, heading a delegation that included more than 10 Cabinet ministers, seeks security and economic assistance from Iraq’s Muslim neighbor, with which it fought an eight-year war in the 1980s.
Earlier yesterday, the U.S. military announced it had filed charges against 11 soldiers, accusing them of assaulting Iraqis detained during combat operations in the capital.
Three British soldiers from the 1st Battalion Staffordshire Regiment were killed in a roadside bombing before dawn yesterday while on patrol in the city of Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, British officials said. At least nine Iraqi police officers died in other attacks across the country.
Iraqi police also arrested a would-be suicide bomber in Baghdad before he could detonate an explosive belt in a crowd mourning victims of an attack Wednesday that killed 27 persons, mostly children, an official said. It was the second time a would-be suicide attacker was captured this week.
Security tightened in Baghdad yesterday, a day after a fresh wave of suicide car bombs and explosions targeting U.S. and Iraqi security forces rocked the capital, killing at least 33 persons and wounding at least 111, including seven U.S. soldiers.
In other violence, a suicide attacker detonated an explosive belt inside a police station 10 miles south of the northern city of Mosul, killing six policemen and wounding 20 others, Brig. Gen. Saeed Ahmed said.
A suicide attacker detonated his car near an Iraqi army convoy in the town of Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, army Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin said. At least four soldiers were wounded, hospital officials said.
A suicide car bomber also struck an Iraqi police patrol in the Baghdad subdivision of Dora, killing three commandos and wounding five civilians, hospital and police officials said.
Elsewhere in the capital, a suicide car bomber struck near a U.S. military convoy in the southeast section of the city, setting a Humvee ablaze, police Lt. Col. Hassan Salloub said. No U.S. casualties were reported.
Three Iraqi soldiers and two U.S. troops were injured when a bomb they were trying to defuse exploded in a village 28 miles northwest of Kirkuk, police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader said. There was no report from U.S. officials.
In Baghdad, motorists reported more police and checkpoints on the streets yesterday, after the escalation in suicide attacks and roadside bombings on Friday.
One of the bombings occurred after sundown on a bridge over the Tigris River near the home of President Jalal Talabani. Four security guards were killed and nine persons were wounded in that attack. Mr. Talabani was at home at the time, aides said, but the target may have been a U.S. convoy.
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