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68 Killed, 200 Injured In Basra Blasts
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Iraqis
in panic at the scene of one of three car bombs
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Additional
Reporting By Numir Al-Hijazi, IOL Correspondent
BASRA,
Iraq, April 21 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – At least 68
people were killed and 200 others injured early Wednesday, April 21,
in a series of car bombs that devastated three police stations in this
southern Iraqi city.
Three
Iraqis were also killed in a separate attack on the Iraqi police
academy in Al-Zubeir town, south of Basra, Iraq’s second largest
city.
Mortar
rounds and rocket-propelled grenades were also fired at the three
facilities before the booby-trapped cars went off, Aljazeera
television quoted security sources as saying.
British
military media spokesman Hisham Halawa confirmed that they were car
bombs, adding that the coordinated explosions occurred at about 7:15
a.m. (04:15 a.m. GMT).
Among
the dead were many children, who had been going to kindergarten in a
minibus that was caught in one blast, eyewitnesses said.
A
security official told IslamOnline.net that many policemen and
civilians were also caught in the blasts.
Osama
Abdel Karim, an 18-year-old university student, told IslamOnline.net
that one of the blasts was so strong that it reduced to rubble the
city’s main police station.
He
said windows of nearby houses and buildings were smashed in the
explosions.
British
troops were only able to reach one of the three doomed stations after
they had been rained down with stones by angry Iraqis.
"They
are being stoned," squadron leader John Arnold was quoted as
saying by Reuters.
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A
wounded boy is carried to an ambulance
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He
added that no casualties among British forces had been reported.
A
Reuters reporter has counted 55 corpses at the morgue of Sadr Teaching
Hospital.
A
doctor told the correspondent that the bodies of 39 victims had been
identified while at least 16 other bodies were burnt beyond
recognition.
Also
on Wednesday, three Iraqis were killed and two British soldiers
wounded in an explosion at the new Iraqi police academy in Al-Zubeir
town, some 30 kilometers south of Basra, Aljazeera said.
The
killer blasts came just one day after 22 prisoners were
killed and some 92 others injured in a mortar attack on the
U.S.-run Abu Gharib prison, west of Baghdad.
Iraqi
police stations and facilities had come under frequent attacks since
the fall of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein regime one year ago.
In
February, some 47 Iraqis perished
in a car-bomb attack at a Baghdad recruitment center for the new Iraqi
army a day after a bombing at a police station south of Baghdad killed
up to 50 people.
A
cohort of Iraqi scholars had issued a fatwa that attacks against Iraqi
institutions “are
not Jihad, but rather aggression and conspiracy impeding a
power transfer from occupation forces".
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