October 27, 2003
Over 200 Are Wounded at Red Cross and 4 Iraqi Police Posts
By DEXTER FILKINS
and RAYMOND BONNER
AGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 ¡ª A series of suicide bombings shook Baghdad early today, including an attack on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and blasts at four Iraqi police stations that punctuated two days of bloody violence in this capital city.
Iraq's police chief and deputy interior minister, Ahmad Ibrahim, said at a news conference that 34 people had been killed and 224 had been wounded in the attacks. He said 26 of the dead were civilians and 8 were police officers; 65 police officers and 159 civilians were wounded.
The explosions plunged the capital into chaos at the outset of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Ambulances raced through the streets and smoke rose from smoldering cars blown up in the blasts. Iraqi police officers dug through rubble to search for bodies.
In Washington, President Bush said the United States would stay the course to rebuild Iraq. "We're determined not to be intimidated by these killers," Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House after meeting with L. Paul Bremer III, the United States' chief administrator in Iraq.
The attacks took place between 8:30 and 10:15 a.m. local time, leading American and Iraqi officials to believe that they were part of a highly coordinated operation. There was a strong suspicion that foreigners were involved, and American and Iraqi officials referred to a "new element" being responsible for the bombings.
The officials differentiated between today's attacks and one on Sunday against a highly guarded hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying. The Sunday attack was attributed to loyalists to the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein.
An attack on a fifth police station was foiled when the attacker was shot and wounded. American and Iraqi officials said he was carrying Syrian identification and had identified himself as Syrian.
Another of the police station attacks succeeded, officials said, in part because the bomber was driving a police vehicle and wearing a police uniform.
The blast at the Red Cross headquarters occurred when an ambulance carrying a bomb exploded about 40 to 50 feet away.
Compared with other potential targets in Baghdad, the Red Cross building was lightly protected with oil drums filled with sand and some barbed wire; many other buildings have truck barricades or cement walls as a security cordon.
Iraqi witnesses said they saw an Iraqi ambulance and a small civilian car speeding down a narrow alleyway leading to the building's parking lot about 8:30 a.m. The cars were racing and then the ambulance sped up and drove inside the gate, said Rawzi Jamar, who runs a cigarette stand about 1,000 yards from the building.
An Iraqi police major said the attacker had crashed through the security gate. The bomb exploded about 50 feet from the building. Most of the Red Cross staff had not yet arrived for work when the blast went off around 8:30 a.m., leaving a crater six feet deep. It heavily damaged buildings on both sides of the street and shattered windows a mile away.
The charred remains of bodies could be seen in the water-soaked parking lot, where body parts were scattered and fires burned inside cars.
The Red Cross had reduced its staff in Iraq after the devastating bombing of the United Nations headquarters here in August. The staff members who remained had moved their offices to the middle of their four-story concrete building in the center of the city.
Shortly after the bomb at the Red Cross facility, four more suicide attackers struck at Iraqi police stations across Baghdad nearly simultaneously with powerful car and truck bombs.
The attacks left a trail of devastation from Saidiya, in southern Baghdad, to Shaab, about 10 miles to the north.
At least 15 people were killed, and more than 100 were wounded, including 30 seriously, according to doctors at the Yarmuk hospital, which received most of the casualties. The dead were both Iraqi police officers and civilians, including a 12-year-old boy and a 25-year-old woman and her infant daughter, according to witnesses. One American soldier was also killed, according to a statement from the military.
A pool of blood marked the spot in west Baghdad where several bystanders were killed when one of the suicide attackers failed to breach the barricades around the Khadra police station. With his path blocked, he blew up the vehicle in the middle of a busy four-lane street filled with shops and schools.
An ambulance driver, Mohammad Hassan Mahdi, said he took at least eight wounded Iraqi police to the hospital and four bodies. Two children were among the dead, one of them a boy with his head sheared off by shrapnel.
Abdul Karim al-Jibouri, the owner of a small market near the station, said he had thrown himself to the ground when he heard the explosion. "It is a holy month, and I dont think any Muslims can do this criminal act," Mr. al-Jibouri said. "It cant be."
Mr. al-Jibouri and another man also said American soldiers had mistakenly shot one man in the chaos following the attack when he ran toward the station seeking his family. Their accounts could not be independently confirmed, and soldiers at the scene denied that they had shot anyone.
Bodies stacked up in the morgue at the Yarmuk hospital. Some of the dead were burned beyond recognition.
Bandaged men lay in rooms all over the hospital, friends or relatives sitting quietly beside them. One wounded man slowly chewed a sandwich of lamb in pita bread, since Ramadan's requirement for daytime fasting does not apply to the injured.
Other beds held men in no condition to eat. In a room that stank of sweat and drying blood, Mahdi Mahawis lay curled on his side in a blue hospital gown, his head and hands bandaged.
Mr. Mahawis said he had gone to the Saidiya police station on behalf of his son, a prisoner there. There was the sound of an explosion, and then there was a big fire in front of the station, he said, and "I saw many people lying down on the ground."
The bomb attack in Saidiya also damaged the roof of a courtyard at a mosque. Thamer al-Aani, who delivers the call to prayer, said no one was seriously injured.
The United States must pull its troops out of Iraq, he said, adding "If the Americans leave, the explosions will leave with them."
In the attack on Sunday, an American colonel was killed and at least 16 people were wounded when a barrage of rockets from a homemade launching pad slammed into a hotel from about a quarter-mile away. American military officials said they did not believe Mr. Wolfowitz was the target of the Sunday attack, though they called the attack carefully planned.
One official said that the military had had specific intelligence of an imminent attack on the hotel, the Rashid, where senior personnel of the American occupation live and eat, but that no special precautions had been taken.
Mr. Wolfowitz, who arrived here on Friday for brief visit, was one floor above where one of the rockets hit, officials said; he was not hurt.
Officials said the wounded in the hotel attack included five American soldiers, seven American civilians working in various Iraqi ministries as part of the American-led effort to rebuild Iraq, and four non-American civilians. The identity of the dead colonel was not immediately made public.
Raymond Bonner contributed to this article from Baghdad.
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