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Bombers kill 65 at two mosques in Iraq
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-18 23:09
Suicide bombers killed 65 worshippers at two Shiite
mosques near the Iranian border Friday, while two car bombs targeted a Baghdad
hotel housing foreign journalists and killed eight Iraqis.
A woman cries as she holds her child at the
site where two suicide car bombers detonated vehicles in Baghdad, Iraq,
Friday, Nov. 18, 2005, in a residential district. A hotel housing foreign
journalists was the apparent target, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. The
blast was also close to an Interior Ministry building at the center of a
torture dispute. At least six people were killed and 43 injured in the
blast near the Hamra hotel in the Jadriyah district, officials said.
[AP] |
The suicide attackers targeted the Sheik Murad mosque and the Khanaqin Grand
Mosque in Khanaqin, 90 miles northeast of Baghdad, as dozens of people were
attending Friday prayers, police said. In addition to the 65 killed, the police
command said 75 were wounded in the largely Kurdish town.
At sunset, dozens of people were still searching the rubble of the
three-story Khanaqin Grand Mosque. As the men dug, 12-year-old Sarkhel Akram
collected copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, then she kissed them and
put them away.
The suicide attacker walked into the mosque and detonated his explosives in
the middle of a group of people, said Ali Abdullah.
Omar Saleh, 73, said from his bed at Kalar hospital that he was bowing in
prayer when the bomb exploded. "The roof fell on us and the place was filled
with dead bodies," he said.
The blasts near the Hamra Hotel in Baghdad knocked down protective concrete
walls and blew out windows but caused no structural damage. Several nearby homes
were destroyed, and firefighters and U.S. troops joined neighbors to dig through
the debris to pull out victims.
Gunfire followed the blasts, which came less than a minute apart and echoed
throughout downtown Baghdad. They sent a mushroom cloud hundreds of feet into
the air.
"What we have here appears to be two suicide car bombs (that) attempted to
breach the security wall in the vicinity of the hotel complex, and I think the
target was the Hamra Hotel," U.S. Brig. Gen. Karl Horst told reporters at the
scene.
News organizations housed at the Hamra include NBC News
and The Boston Globe.
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