At least four people, including a woman, were killed and more than 20 wounded on Monday when at least one car bomb exploded in a western Baghdad neighbourhood, witnesses and hospital sources said.
The blast happened on Kindi street in front of a house belonging to Naim Haddad, a former senior Ba’ath official from Saddam Hussein’s regime.
An AFP reporter on the scene saw two bodies, one of which had been completely cut in half and the other torn to shreds by the powerful blast.
At the nearby Yarmuk hospital, Doctor Adel Badawi said he had received ”two bodies, a woman and a child”.
He stressed that it was still difficult to establish a definitive toll from the body parts scattered by the blast.
The house of the former Ba’ath official, who was slightly wounded in the leg, was completely devastated by the blast. His wife and three children were also wounded in the explosion.
Yet he told reporters he does not believe he was the target of the attack.
”I was not specifically targeted, this is part of the daily violence which grips this country,” he said.
One vehicle was on fire and the explosion appeared to have blown a huge crater in this street of the Harthiyah neighbourhood and smashed windows all around. Another nearby vehicle was completely charred.
”I heard a huge explosion and then everything went black,” said a witness, Siriyas al-Jaf.
A large number of ambulances were seen rushing to the nearest hospital while firefighters were working to extinguish the fire and United States troops tried to keep the crowd at bay.
At one point, soldiers had to fire shots in the air to break up the protesters, some of whom were chanting anti-US slogans. — Sapa-AFP