A tanker truck exploded on Wednesday at a busy crossroads in the Iraqi capital killing 10 people and wounding 15.
”This was an act of terrorism because there was no [military] target here,” Baghdad police chief Hamid Sabah Fahed said.
The blast went off at 6am (3am GMT) in the Al-Bayaa district in the southwest of the capital.
Fahed first said the tanker had been loaded with explosives, but another senior officer later admitted there were two theories.
”One, that the truck was loaded with explosives and it went up.
Two, that a smaller vehicle that crashed into it accidentally blew up the petrol inside,” said a brigadier general who asked not to be named.
Reporters at the scene said the tanker exploded in the middle of a wide crossroads, devastating the immediate surrounding area, incinerating cars and people in them.
Four people were dead in one car, while a pickup truck, a minibus and the tanker truck were reduced to burnt-out metal wreckage.
Hassan Haidar Khattab, a vegetable seller who was walking out of his house, described the carnage.
”I saw a US convoy and the tanker was trying to follow it over the crossroads,” he said.
”There appeared to be an accident when a white civilian car crashed into the tanker which exploded.”
Two car bombs hit two police stations in the capital on Sunday, killing eight people and wounding 17. — Sapa-AFP