A suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle in a crowd of mostly children near US troops in Baghdad yesterday, killing 27 people and wounding at least 67, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
A policeman at Kindi Hospital said 25 bodies and 25 wounded had arrived there: "Most of them are children." One US soldier was among those killed, and three were among the injured, US forces said.
Battalion commander Lieut Col Kevin Farrell said his men had cordoned off an area of houses near a highway for security sweeps when the bomber drove up a side alley. The bomber failed to pierce the military cordon and detonated his vehicle in a crowd of children and adults nearby.
"The scene was almost indescribable," he said. "People nearest the blast, some were literally obliterated on the scene. Multiple lacerations and traumatic amputations. At least nine people I saw were killed instantly in a most horrific fashion."
Sgt Maj Dan Huell said he was knocked to the ground. "I jumped back up and ran to the blast site. Then you see all the screaming, hollering, injuries. The soldiers performed well . . . The few that we could evacuate - soldiers pulled them up, hand-carried a few of them. Little kids. Hand-carried into our vehicles. We got them treated."
A Reuters reporter at Kindi Hospital saw at least a dozen coffins loaded into cars at the morgue.
"My son was lucky - he was injured by a piece of shrapnel that lodged in his head. All the rest of his friends died," said Abu Mohammed, a grey bearded man in white robes.
A Reuters Television cameraman at the scene said the vehicle blew up near houses, reducing three to rubble. Women in the street screamed in anger and sorrow near pools of blood.
The atrocity was similar to a triple car bomb attack near a US convoy last September in which 41 people were killed, 34 of them children.
US forces say most suicide bombings are carried out by foreign Sunni Arab Islamists loyal to groups like al-Qaeda's Iraq wing, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Washington said its forces had captured a senior Zarqawi lieutenant on Monday.
Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told PBS television the capture of Abu Abd Al-Aziz, Zarqawi's "main leader in Baghdad", was going to hurt the Zarqawi operation significantly.
Suicide bombings have increased since the Shia- and Kurdish-led government took power in April.
On Sunday, a bomber wearing an explosive vest killed about 20 people at an army recruiting station in Baghdad. A week earlier another bomber killed a similar number at a recruiting station for police.
Mounting violence is dividing Iraq on ethnic and sectarian fault lines, at a time when US forces are hoping to withdraw without leaving a civil war behind.
While most victims of insurgent attacks are Shias killed by Sunni bombers and gunmen, Sunnis say the mainly Shia police respond by rounding up Sunni men and killing some.
In the Sbaa Abkar district of northern Baghdad, an angry crowd of mourners carried three coffins through the streets.
They said the dead were among a group of 13 or 14 men arrested by police on Monday and found dead in a Baghdad morgue on Tuesday, showing signs of beatings and torture.
The interior ministry spokesman said the incident was being investigated, along with another atrocity that sparked demonstrations on Tuesday.
In that incident, denounced by Sunni political groups, 12 Sunni labourers were taken from a hospital by police and died, apparently suffocated in van parked in hot sun.
Angry Shias marched on Monday after a Shia family of nine were murdered in their beds by gunmen.