BAGHDAD, 23 April 2005 — A car bomb exploded during Friday prayers at a mosque in Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding 20, police said. The blast came as two militant groups claimed responsibility for shooting down a Russian-made helicopter carrying 11 civilians, and one released a video purportedly showing insurgents shooting the crash’s lone survivor.
In another development, a third Iraqi militant group threatened to kill three kidnapped Romanian journalists and their Iraqi-American translator unless Romanian troops leave Iraq within four days, Al-Jazeera reported yesterday while airing a video of the captives.
The video showed the three Romanians — two men and a woman — sitting cross-legged against a wall with their hands chained. The woman, sitting in the middle and said to be Marie Jeanne Ion, is seen talking but Al-Jazeera did not air the audio.
Elsewhere, one US soldier was killed yesterday by a roadside bomb near the northern city of Tal Afar, the military said. On Thursday, a US Marine died in a nonhostile incident at Camp Delta, near Karmah, west of Baghdad, the military said. It gave no details.
The violence was part of a surge of dramatic attacks that have caused heavy casualties in recent weeks, ending a relative lull since Jan. 30 elections.
The car bomb exploded during midday prayers at Al-Subeih Mosque, in the capital’s eastern New Baghdad neighborhood, said police Col. Ahmed Aboud. Witnesses said a car parked outside the building since the morning exploded.
One section of the mosque collapsed, and frantic worshippers in blood-spattered clothes searched through the rubble for loved ones, as wailing women beat their chests in grief. Body parts littered the ground. One man clutched a child’s foot, shaking and weeping.
“I was inside the mosque when the explosion happened, and I saw many dead and injured,” said another worshipper, grocery store owner Abdelallah Faraj. “This is a cowardly and savage act that aims to create conflict among Iraqis.”
Police sealed off the area. The US military had no immediate comment.
Shiite mosques and funerals have become a frequent target of Sunni-led insurgents. In February, suicide bombers attacked a number of them during the Shiite commemoration of Ashoura, killing nearly 100 people.
In Baghdad, the US-led coalition sent investigators yesterday to the site where officials said a Bulgarian-owned helicopter carrying 11 civilians was shot down north of the capital. The dead included six American bodyguards for US diplomats, three Bulgarian crew and two security guards from Fiji, officials said.
Two groups claimed responsibility for shooting down the Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter Thursday and released a video to support their claims.
A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq posted a video on the Internet purporting to show militants capturing and shooting the lone survivor. The group posted a video showing burning wreckage and bodies, as well as gunmen discovering a man in high grass and shooting him.
Mihail Mihailov, the manager of Heli Air, the Bulgarian company that owned the downed Mi-8 chopper, said the man shown on the video was one of the two pilots. He identified the victim as Lyubomir Kostov.
A spokesman for US forces in Iraq said a US medevac team arrived at the site within half an hour of receiving the report of Thursday’s crash and found no survivors.
TV channel Al-Jazeera, meanwhile, broadcast a video yesterday that it said was from a separate group calling itself the Mujahedeen Army in Iraq that showed the helicopter crashing to the ground and claiming it shot it down Thursday.
The brief Mujahedeen Army video, aired yesterday on Al-Jazeera, shows a helicopter flying about 100 feet above the ground. The camera suddenly shakes, swinging down to show the ground near the cameraman’s feet — apparently as the missile hits the helicopter.
When the camera view rights again toward the sky, the helicopter is in flames, arcing toward the ground with a pall of black smoke trailing behind it.
— With input from agencies
