At least 25 people, many of them children, were killed and 25 more wounded today by a suicide car bomb near a patrol where US forces were handing out sweets in Baghdad.
A duty policeman at the Kindi hospital
A duty policeman at the Kindi hospital said 25 dead bodies and 25 wounded had arrived there. "Most of them are children. The Americans were handing out sweets at the time of the attack," he said.
US troops said one US soldier and many Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast, including at least seven Iraqi children. Three US soldiers were among the wounded.
"The vehicle, laden with explosives, drove up to a (US military) Humvee before detonating. Many Iraqi civilians, mostly children, were around the Humvee at the time of the blast," US military spokesman Sergeant David Abrams said.
A television cameraman at the scene shortly after the bombing said the vehicle blew up in between houses, reducing parts of three houses to rubble. Women in the street screamed in anger and sorrow near pools of blood in the street.
Last September, 35 Iraqi children were killed in a string of bombs that exploded as American troops were handing out sweets at a government-sponsored celebration to inaugurate a sewage plant in west Baghdad. It was the largest death toll of children in any insurgent attack since the start of the Iraq conflict.
Many of the families of children killed in the September attack blamed the Americans for the tragedy because their presence attracted insurgents to the ceremony.
Elsewhere, a bomb exploded at a Sunni mosque in eastern Iraq, killing two people and wounding 16. Police, quoting witnesses, said the blast occurred late last night in Jalowla near the Iranian border. Six of the wounded were in serious condition.
Gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier while he was driving his car in western Baghdad, police said. Separately, coalition forces in Baghdad have captured Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's top lieutenant in Baghdad, Abu Abd al-Aziz, Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday.