BAGHDAD, 6 December 2003 — About 1,000 Iraqis, mostly Shiites, yesterday rallied in central Baghdad to condemn “terrorism” against Iraqis and US “liberation” forces as four Iraqis and a US soldier died in a bomb attack elsewhere in the capital.
Dozens of children aged between five and 10 marched at the front of the protest, with flowers in their hands, under white banners proclaiming in red letters: “Children - innocent victims of terrorism,” and: “Terrorism blocks any future for children”.
Organizer Sabih Hassan, head of a child protection association set up since the US-led invasion, said they had all “become orphans because of terrorism”. Hassan said the march, the second here in a week, was against “all operations, including those targeting Americans”. “Our children have a vital need for peace and security.”
As the protest was under way, four Iraqis and a US soldier died and at least 15 people were wounded when a homemade bomb exploded as an American convoy drove down a crowded shopping street in Baghdad.
The “Iraqi democratic trend”, set up after the war by tribes in the Shiite areas of Karbala and Babel in central Iraq, organized the demonstration, said general secretary Aziz Al-Yassiri.
Sheikh Abdul Jalil Cherhani, 55, a leading member of the group said: “We are against those who kill Iraqis, those who fight the Americans who liberated the country.” Iraq’s majority Shiite community suffered some of the worst repression from the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein, which put down a Shiite rebellion at the loss of thousands of lives in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war.
A bomb exploded in the middle of a busy Baghdad road yesterday, killing an American soldier and at least four Iraqis as a military convoy and a packed minibus passed in opposite directions, police and witnesses said.
The attack came ahead of a visit to Iraq by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a key architect of the war to oust Saddam Hussein but now under fire over the chaos that has ensued.
Police said 16 Iraqis were wounded in the Baghdad blast, one of two bombings on US convoys in the capital, as Muslims headed to mosques for Friday prayers. There were no casualties in the other attack.
In the fatal attack, the US military said in a statement that the device exploded between the first and second vehicles of the three-vehicle convoy, killing one soldier. The minibus was badly damaged in the blast, with all its windows blown out.
