Meanwhile, a parked car bomb ripped through a crowded transport hub in southwest Baghdad’s Baiyaa neighborhood at morning rush hour, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 50, another officer said on the same condition.
Many of the victims had been lining up for buses, awaiting a ride to work. Some 40 minibuses were incinerated in the explosion, police said.
Associated Press Television News video showed an open square strewn with smoldering car parts and charred bodies with clothes in tatters. Bystanders, some weeping, gingerly loaded human remains into ambulances.
A pickup truck rumbled slowly away from the scene, with two pairs of legs — the dead bodies of victims — dangling out of the back.
Inna Lillah…
Ghastly find
One of the police officers who gave information about the ghastly discovery of bodies southeast of Baghdad is based at Interior Ministry headquarters in the capital, and the other is based in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Sporadic clashes had been under way in the Salman Pak area for several days, between Interior Ministry commandos and suspected insurgents, the Kut officer said. It was unclear whether the discovery of the bodies was related to the recent fighting.
Salman Pak and its surrounding area has been the focus of new U.S. military operations to oust suspected al-Qaida fighters from the Baghdad’s outskirts. American forces launched a drive into Salman Pak and neighboring Arab Jabour two weeks ago.(Interesting)
At the time, ground forces commander Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said U.S. troops were heading into those areas in force for the first time in three years.
3 U.K. troops slain
Also Thursday, the British military said three British soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb in southern Iraq.
The bomb exploded near the soldiers’ vehicle late Wednesday southeast of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, the military said in a statement. Another soldier was wounded in the blast and remains in stable condition at a military hospital, it said.
The death raised to at least 154 the number of British troops killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
Britain has withdrawn hundreds of troops from Iraq, leaving a force of around 5,500 based mainly on the fringes of Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. The U.S. currently has about 155,000 troops in Iraq.
On Wednesday, outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair said his country would withdraw even more troops within weeks, but he refused to set a more specific timetable