Dozens of Iraqi children killed by car bombs aimed at US soldiers

10.10am - By KIM SENGUPTA in Baghdad


The children went to their deaths while queuing for American candy at a neighbourhood party. In one of the bloodiest days of Iraq's war of occupation, three suicide bombers took the lives of at least 34 children, the largest number killed in any single attack since the war began 17 months ago.

At Yarmouk Hospital in central Baghdad, were the wounded were taken, there was a ward full of children, covered in blood, eyes staring with pain and incomprehension, silent in shock. The sound of crying, long heartbreaking sobs, came from the parents around the beds.

"The Americans called us, they told us come here, come here, asking us if we wanted sweets. We went beside them, then a car exploded," said Abdel Rahman Dawoud, 12, lying naked in bed, his body riddled with shrapnel.

The parents were quick to direct their anger at the US soldiers, rather than the militants, blaming them for luring their children into danger.

At least 41 were killed and 139 wounded in the attacks , but the vast majority of the victims were children, and many of them, said the doctors, were not expected to survive.

The disaster at Al-Amel, in the south-west of the capital, began shortly after an American convoy arrived in the working-class area, which had hitherto escaped much of the violence. They were there for a ceremony to install new pumping systems at a sewage station.

The soldiers started to hand out sweets, and excited little boys and girls rushed over just as the bombers struck , shortly after 1pm local time.

Two cars exploded within minutes. As those who survived fled screaming, a third went off directly in their path. US forces sealed the area with tanks and armoured cars, and helicopter gunships circled overhead.

But the lethal damage had already been done. The pumping station was relatively undamaged, but one of the cars used for the bombing, a mess of twisted metal, had been catapulted into the forecourt, human flesh hung from the cream coloured walls over the main entrance.

The road outside had two holes gouged out by blasts that had set fire to a pile of refuse. The last and the largest of the bombs had exploded 50 yards up the road, a row of six incinerated cars showing its ferocity.

The scale of the human cost was evident at Yarmouk Hospital. Ambulances and commandeered private cars brought in the injured, one makeshift stretcher carried a young boy and his severed leg. Doctors and nurses struggled to get past frantic, wailing relations.

Rusel Abbas Obeid lay on a bed in a torn pink jumpsuit, deep gashes on her stomach and cuts on her face from shrapnel. She had gone out to a shop and then ran over to join her friends around the American armoured cars.

Wiping blood from her daughter's face with an already saturated handkerchief, Hamdiya Hossein Obeid said: "When the first explosion came, I felt my heart pound. I ran out but my neighbours stopped me because there might be other bombs. But then there were the other explosions and I knew I had to find her.

"It took me about half an hour before I did so, in that time I saw so many of the young ones lying on the road, many of them were dead, I think."

In other attacks yesterday, two Iraqi policemen and a US soldier were killed, and 60 others injured, by a car bomber at Abu Ghraib prison. Another American soldier died, and seven were injured, when a rocket hit a military base.

At Tal Afar in western Iraq, a bomb killed four civilians and injured 16. US forces bombed two houses in Fallujah, claiming them to be hideouts used by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

- INDEPENDENT and REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq