BAGHDAD, 1 March 2005 — A man drove a car full of explosives into a crowd of people applying for police jobs in Hilla, 100 km south of the capital, yesterday and detonated it. At least 125 people were killed and another 130 wounded in the single bloodiest attack in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The 9.30 a.m. blast was so powerful it nearly vaporized the bomber’s car, leaving only its engine partially intact. The injured were piled into pickup trucks and ambulances and taken to nearby hospitals.
The bomber blew the car up next to a line of recruits waiting at a health center to take an eye test so they could join the Iraqi police, witnesses said. Many of those killed were at the market across the road, and were caught in the blast as they shopped.
“I was standing in the queue when I saw this Mitsubishi coming slowly toward us,” Ameer Hassan, one of the recruits, said at a nearby clinic. “Then it blew up in a huge fireball. When I opened my eyes again, I was in hospital.”
Smoke rose from the wreckage of burned-out market stalls as bystanders loaded mangled corpses on to rickety wooden carts, usually used to carry fruit and vegetables. Others, their limbs ripped to shreds, were piled into the back of pick-up trucks. Nearby buildings were pockmarked by shrapnel. People wept, clutched their heads in despair and shouted “Allah-o-Akbar” as rescuers led the injured away.
“The suicide bomber came from a nearby alleyway,” said Zeyd Shamran. “There were two people in (the car) and when it stopped one man got out, shook hands and kissed the other man.” Moments later the car exploded, he said.
Following a funeral procession in Hilla, many of the dead will be taken to Najaf for burial. Hilla is located just south of the so called “Triangle of Death,” the mixed Sunni-Shiite region south of the capital that has earned the nickname owing to the frequency of insurgent bombing.
Angry crowds gathered outside the hospital demanding to know the fate of their relatives.
“I was lucky because I was the last person in line when the explosion took place. Suddenly there was panic and many frightened people stepped on me. I lost consciousness and the next thing I was aware of was being in the hospital” said Muhsin Hadi, 29, a recruit. One of his legs was broken in the blast.
A second car bomb exploded yesterday at a police checkpoint in Musayyib, about 30 km north of Hilla, killing at least one policeman and wounding several others, police said on condition of anonymity.
In Baghdad, the US military said it was investigating the death of a US soldier who was shot dead manning a traffic checkpoint in the capital a day earlier. Nearly 1,500 US troops have died since the war began in March 2003.
In central Baghdad, Iraqi troops blocked main avenues leading to and from Firdous Square, the roundabout in central Baghdad where Iraqis toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003. Occasional shots and busts of automatic weapons fire could be heard during the sweep of the Battaween area, know locally as the Sudanese district.
Several people believed to be Sudanese were seen being arrested by police. Some of Baghdad’s past suicide bombers have in the past been identified as Sudanese.
In Al-Mashahda, 40 km north of Baghdad, police found three unidentified corpses that had their hands tied together with plastic cuffs, the police commissioner Abbas Abdul Ridha said.
— Additional input from agencies
