Suicide bombs kill 10 in Baghdad's Green Zone

9.30am UPDATE

BAGHDAD - Two suicide bombers killed 10 civilians, including four US nationals in one of the bloodiest attacks inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, an attack claimed by America's top enemy in Iraq.

The blasts at a souvenir bazaar and a cafe frequented by US troops and civilians were the first suicide bombings inside what is supposed to be the safest place in Iraq. The country's interim government immediately vowed to strike back.

At least 20 people were injured in the explosions that scattered debris, blood and flesh over a wide area and sent a thick plume of smoke over the zone's palms and buildings.

The attacks, on the eve of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, occurred within minutes of each other, setting the bazaar alight and gutting the Green Zone Cafe.

"People were screaming. I was on the floor," said Mohammed Nawaf al-Obeidi, 25, owner of the nearby Mo's Restaurant, who was at the cafe. "People were stampeding, trying to get out," he said, his right hand bandaged.

At the cafe, an orange metal-framed tent built onto a former petrol station, the area was littered with glass, twisted metal, blood and food. Pieces of flesh were lying up to 15 metres away.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said four Americans and at least six Iraqis died in the lunchtime blasts.

US military and embassy officials in Baghdad said there were only three confirmed US deaths, but remains recovered from the scene showed there could be a fourth.

The sprawling Green Zone, in Saddam Hussein's former presidential compound, houses government offices and the US and British embassies. It is protected by towering concrete blast walls and US troops in sandbagged posts.

It has been hit by frequent mortar attacks and earlier this month a bomb was defused outside the same cafe.

Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for the bombings, a statement on a website said.

"Two lions from the Tawhid and Jihad group's Martyrdom Brigade managed to get inside ... the Green Zone," it said, calling it one of the group's most successful operations.

Iraq's interim government pledged to retaliate.

"We deliver a message to terrorism in all its forms -- to Zarqawi terrorism and al Qaeda and the remnants of the former regime -- we are waiting for them and we will attack them wherever they are," said National Security Adviser Kassim Daoud.

The United States has offered a US$25 million ($37.03 million) bounty for Zarqawi, saying he has links to al Qaeda and accusing him of orchestrating some of Iraq's deadliest suicide bombings.

Britain ordered banks to seek out and freeze any assets owned by his Tawhid and Jihad group, which beheaded British hostage Kenneth Bigley a week ago. A Treasury official said the timing was unrelated.

One US soldier was shot dead and another killed by a roadside bomb in separate attacks in Baghdad, bringing the US combat toll to 831 since last year's invasion. Seven US soldiers have been killed by roadside blasts and a suicide bombing in Iraq since Tuesday evening.

West of Baghdad, US warplanes struck at targets in the rebel-held city of Falluja, killing five people, one of them a 13-year-old boy, and wounding 12, hospital doctors said.

The US military said the raid was the latest strike against sites used by Zarqawi militants.

On Wednesday, Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi threatened military action against Falluja unless the city handed over Zarqawi and his group.

Falluja locals said they had no evidence Zarqawi was there. "Where is this Zarqawi that Allawi is talking about? Let him come and show us where Zarqawi is," yelled one furious resident standing in the debris after the bombing. "These are homes."

Mounting violence is undermining efforts to rebuild Iraq and President Ghazi Yawar told the Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat that elections due by Jan. 31 could be changed.

In Tokyo, foreign donors ended a two-day meeting agreeing they must speed the allocation of promised reconstruction funds.

More Iraqi civilians were killed, including a woman journalist and a judge who were shot dead by gunmen in separate attacks in Baghdad.

In the northern city of Mosul, a roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded six Iraqi National Guards. An Iraqi photographer working for a German agency was also shot dead in the city, probably by insurgents, an agency spokesman said.

Two senior Iraqi army officers were shot dead in Baquba, north of the capital, a colleague said, and police in Kirkuk said they had found the beheaded body of a man believed to have been working for US-led forces.

Gunmen kidnapped two Turkish and two Iraqi truck drivers in separate ambushes near Samarra, police said. An Iraqi militant group said it had beheaded a kidnapped Turkish driver for cooperating "with the occupying Crusaders".

- REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq