Two suicide car bombs exploded on Thursday morning outside the main entrance to Iraq’s interior ministry, killing five policemen and wounding five others, security officials and an eyewitness said.
The two car bombs blew up at 7.30am (4.30am GMT), with the first vehicle apparently serving as a decoy for the second and more powerful blast outside the interior ministry headquarters, a strategic post in Iraq’s battle against a lethal insurgency.
”There was a KIA vehicle that tried to enter the checkpoint and at this moment blew up. It was not that effective but made a large amount of smoke so we couldn’t see anything,” said policeman Mohamed Jaafar, who witnessed the blast.
”Two minutes later, a Jeep Cherokee reached the checkpoint [and] opened fire with a MG machinegun and police responded with PKC fire on the vehicle but it was too late because he reached the checkpoint and blew up.”
An interior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the account. He said the toll had risen to five police killed and five more wounded. Police had originally said the attack killed two and wounded five.
Shortly before the attack, insurgents fired off a rocket-propelled grenade at an Iraqi army checkpoint near the ministry, causing a fire, another senior interior ministry official said.
Police cars and ambulances rushed the wounded to al-Kindi hospital in eastern Baghdad.
Policemen carried their slumped and wounded colleagues into the emergency room, some of whom had their blue police uniforms coated in blood. Men headed into the hospital’s morgue to view the dead and walked out crying.
The second senior interior ministry official said police had been on alert for such an attack.
”The party which committed this attack was known to us. We arrested some of them yesterday [Wednesday] and two days before. We were prepared,” he said.
It was the second bloody morning in Baghdad after a pair of car bombs targeted Iraqi security forces on Wednesday, killing 10 Iraqi soldiers.
After a relative lull, following the milestone January 30 national elections in Iraq, insurgents have hit back with a vengeance.
A suicide car bomb on Monday in Hilla claimed the lives of 118 people in the deadliest attack by rebels since the fall of Saddam Hussein two years ago. – Sapa-AFP