BAGHDAD — Two bombings 20 minutes apart killed at least 11 Iraqis yesterday, and the U.S. military announced five more American battle deaths. A U.S. rocket attack on the Shi’ite stronghold of Sadr City killed a woman and enraged Shi’ites across Iraq.
Also yesterday, a shepherd found the partially buried bodies of 16 men on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, each of whom had been shot multiple times, bound and blindfolded, police said. The victims appeared to be 30 to 40 years ago, wore civilian clothes and had no identity documents on them.
The grisly discovery was the latest in a wave of apparent tit-for-tat sectarian violence targeting Iraq’s dominant Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs, who were prominent until dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled.
Coupled with attacks on an oil processing plant in the northern city of Kirkuk, the massacre underscored the difficulties faced by the U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi authorities in curbing the raging violence in the country.
Iraqis voted in parliamentary elections Dec. 15, but political leaders are still more than a month away from forming a government. The United States wants the government — which will be dominated by Shi’ites — to include all the main groups in the country, particularly Sunnis. Bringing Sunnis into the political fold is seen as key to ending the Sunni-driven insurgency.
A car bomb exploded about 5 p.m. outside a gasoline station in the eastern New Baghdad neighborhood, killing two persons and wounding 13, police said. U.S. troops cordoned off the scene as firefighters battled giant plumes of orange flames.
About 20 minutes later, a man apparently trying to target a Shi’ite mosque exploded his bomb-packed car in a nearby open-air market in New Baghdad, killing at least nine persons and wounding 57, police said.
Capt. Mohammed Jassim said barricades prevented the suicide attacker, who was driving a black Opel sedan, from reaching the al-Mohsen mosque, where worshippers were gathering for sunset prayers.
The bombings followed a morning barrage of rockets fired by a U.S. helicopter into the nearby eastern Baghdad area of Sadr City, power base of radical anti-American Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The attack, which the U.S. military said was in response to gunfire from men in the neighborhood, was condemned by followers of Sheik al-Sadr from Baghdad to the southern city of Basra.
Military spokeswoman Sgt. Stacy Simon said U.S. forces were in Sadr City about 1 a.m. pursuing a “known terrorist associated with Ansar al-Sunnah,” a Sunni militant group responsible for many suicide attacks and beheadings. At least two persons were detained.
“As troops were leaving the area in a U.S. military helicopter, men on a nearby rooftop began firing at the aircraft,” Sgt. Simon said. “The helicopter returned fire with guns and rockets.”
A 20-year-old woman was killed when a rocket crashed into her home, said her father, who was wounded along with a woman and a 2-year-old child.
The five American troops died Wednesday in separate attacks, the U.S. command said.
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