Paul Tait & Aws Qusay
BAGHDAD, 2 February 2008 — Women bombers detonated by remote control killed 72 people in attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda at two popular Baghdad pet markets yesterday, the Iraqi capital’s deadliest bombings in more than seven months. Police said a woman suicide bomber killed 45 people and wounded 82 at the Ghazil pet market in central Baghdad. Another blast just minutes earlier killed 27 people and wounded 67 at a bird market in southern Baghdad, police said.
The US military, which gave a lower death toll, said both attacks were caused by women suicide bombers and blamed Al-Qaeda. An Iraqi military official said the two women were mentally retarded and the bombs were detonated by remote control.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the bombings underlined “the absolute bankruptcy and brutality” of those who carried them out. “This is the most brutal and the most bankrupt of movements,” Rice told reporters in Washington. “The Iraqi people have been right to turn against these terrible, violent people in their midst who will do anything.”
Maj. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military in Baghdad, said the suicide bombs were detonated remotely by mobile telephones. “We found the mobiles used to detonate the women,” he said.
He did not elaborate on how the Iraqi military knew about their mental condition. Ambulances tried to push through packed streets to get to Ghazil after the blast, which occurred in almost exactly the same spot as a bombing which killed 13 people on Nov. 23.
Police and civil defense officials piled the wounded into wheelbarrows, cars and the back of pickup trucks while US soldiers helped secure the area. Officials at nearby hospitals said they struggled to cope with the wounded. The combined death toll from yesterday’s attacks is the deadliest for Baghdad since June 19, when a car bomb killed 87 people near a Shiite mosque.
