Sunni extremists in Iraq marked the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan on Saturday by killing at least 37 Shia, many of them women, in a bomb attack on people queuing for cooking fuel in Sadr City, in the east of Baghdad.
A crowd of men and women had gathered at a tanker to buy kerosene when a bomb planted in a barrel exploded, detonating the truck and enveloping them in a fireball. At least half of the dead were women.
United States officials had been warning that the start of Ramadan was likely to be accompanied by an upsurge in the levels of violence.
The attack was claimed in a statement by a Sunni extremist group as a reprisal for Shia death squad murders committed by the Jaish al-Mehdi (the Mehdi Army), the militia loyal to the firebrand preacher Moqtadr al-Sadr.
”This operation comes in reaction to the crimes of the Mehdi Army against our Sunni kin in Baghdad,” Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba — the Soldiers of the Prophet’s Companions — said in a statement posted on the internet.
The attack came as Sunnis in Iraq marked the first day of Ramadan. Shias — who calculate the festival’s start in a slightly different way — are expected to begin Ramadan on Sunday. Witnesses described horrific scenes, as rescuers tried to fight through the flames to reach those who had survived the initial blast. People frantically carried survivors from the narrow street to ambulances and hauled away bodies in blankets.
Student Dhiyaa Ali (24) heard the explosion from his home nearby and ran to help. ”I went into the flames just to get anyone left out of the fire,” he said. ”I saw a mother holding her child, both of them burnt and dead.”
The attack in the sprawling slum that is home to two million largely Shia residents follows a sharp increase in murders and abductions in the past week, largely of Sunnis taken by Shia militiamen whose main base is in Sadr City.
It has been the focus of an escalating cycle of tit-for-tat killings since February and the bombing of the Golden Shrine in Samarra. In the past two months, the toll recorded by the United Nations has reached a record 6 500 deaths — 100 fatalities a day, with the vast majority in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, authorities said a leader of Ansar al-Sunnah, a group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq that has been responsible for kidnappings and beheadings, has been captured by Iraqi and US forces. Muntasir Hamoud Ileiwi al-Jabouri and two of his aides were arrested in Muqdadiyah, 90km north-east of Baghdad late on Friday.
The Sunni militant group has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide attacks, the August 2004 execution of 12 Nepalese hostages and a December 2004 explosion at a US military mess hall in Mosul that killed 22 people.
Iraq war spawned terrorism, radicals
The Iraq war gave birth to a new generation of Islamic radicals and the terrorist threat has grown since the September 11 attacks, according to a US intelligence report cited in the New York Times on Saturday.
A National Intelligence Estimate completed in April says Islamic radicalism has mushroomed worldwide and cites the Iraq war as a reason for the spread of jihad ideology, the newspaper reported.
”The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of [al-]Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of ‘self-generating’ cells inspired by al-Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants,” the newspaper said.
The Times cited more than a dozen US government officials and outside experts with knowledge of the classified document.
It is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by US intelligence agencies since the war began in March 2003 and represents a consensus view of the 16 US spy services.
Some of the estimate’s conclusions confirm predictions in a January 2003 National Intelligence Council report that said a war in Iraq might increase support for political Islam worldwide, according to the newspaper.
”It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan,” the Times said.
The National Intelligence Council, the main strategic think tank for the US intelligence community, is in the early stages of preparing a new national estimate on Iraq in response to requests from leading Senate Democrats, including Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, intelligence officials said. – Reuters, Guardian Unlimited Â