Several Dead in Explosion Near Baghdad Police Post

40yearfan · July 19th, 2004, 08:19 AM

Several Dead in Explosion Near Baghdad Police Post
Iraqi Defense Official Killed at Home by Gunmen
By Doug Struck and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 19, 2004; 9:26 AM

BAGHDAD, July 19 -- An explosion Monday morning outside a police station killed at least nine people and devastated a working-class street in southwest Baghdad, killing and injuring Iraqis who wash cars and sell car parts in the dusty neighborhood.

Also Monday, Iraqi officials announced the killing Sunday of a top official in Iraq's Defense Ministry in a drive-by shooting as he walked into his house in Baghdad, wire services reported. Four gunmen drove up as Essam Dijaili, the head of the military's supply department, was bringing dinner home Sunday evening and opened fire, killing him and his bodyguard, said Mishal Sarraf, an adviser to the defense minister.

The killings continued an intensification of violence that escalated last week with two car bombings claiming a total of 21 lives as well as attacks on security forces and officials of the interim Iraqi government. Assailants killed the governor of Nineveh Province last week and tried unsuccessfully to assassinate the country's justice minister.

Reports of the death toll from Monday morning's explosion varied from nine to 15, with as many as 50 wounded. More than a dozen policemen lining up for the morning shift change were injured.

Witnesses differed as to the cause of the attack. Some said a vacant car blew up. Others swore it was a rocket attack. Lt. Col. William Stallings, part of an American patrol that arrived on the scene, said, "We believe it was a fuel truck. That explains the size of the hole."

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bill Salter told wire services that between 10 and 15 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in the attack Monday. Iraqi officials put the total dead at nine, with at least 50 injured.

The explosion left a crater in the dirt street, approximately 12 feet deep and 20 feet wide. "I was starting to work at the garage, when I saw a car coming toward me," said Adnan Mehdi, 26. "He came down the street and suddenly there was an explosion."

At Yarmook Hospital where victims were taken, wounded men lay in bed after bed, heads bandaged, faces and torsos quickly stitched where they had been struck by flying glass and metal. Some were police officers, but more were civilians who worked in the car washes and stalls in the alley behind the police station.

"You're alive, praise God!" a sobbing man cried as he recognized his brother lying in a bed, his head wrapped in white and his face flecked with drying blood. The victim, a 24-year-old car washer named Saddam Abdul Hussain, wept uncontrollably as an uncle gently wiped his face.

A few moments later, his mother appeared in a billowing black veil, wailing and murmuring in protest. "Why do you have to work in that place? Why did you have to leave my sight?" she asked him.

Angry relatives and policemen crowded around the beds of victims from the police station itself, venting their rage at the unknown terrorists, at the Iraqi authorities who have failed to equip and protect the nascent police force and at the American military presence which they felt has brought on all the trouble.

"We serve our people, the terrorists attack us, and there is no one to protect us," said police Sgt. Jabar Qadm, 39, whose arm was injured in the blast. "Why don't the Americans close the borders and keep these people out? If I am killed next time, what will my children do?"

Mahmoud Meshkour, 30, said he quit his job running a shoemaking workshop last year to join the new Iraqi police force. Now the officer lay on a hospital cot with bloody stitches running around his right eye, miraculously still able to see.

"I joined the police because I wanted to catch the terrorists. Now I just want to kill them," he said. His wife and mother stood next to the bed in their black veils, begging him to leave the force. But Meshkour shook his bandaged head. "If we run away, who will protect our country?" he asked.

A senior officer from the bombed police station ran from ward to ward, checking on each victim and complaining bitterly at the shortage of medical supplies in the hospital and the inadequate number of bullet-proof vests and other protective gear at his station.

"We have been threatened and attacked so many times, but still we do not have enough protection, not even concrete barriers like the Americans have," complained the officer, who gave his name only as Capt. Amar. "They put us out in the streets like a photograph, but we can do nothing."

The officer dashed out of one ward, looking for syringes, and came back empty-handed. He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "I just don't want to keep losing my men," he said.

As often happens, some in the crowd claimed that the explosion was caused by an American bomb. They began to shout anti-American slogans, drawing more into the shouting. "Damn the Americans. Where is our god?" yelled two black-clad women at the center of the crowd.

But when the crowd began shouting pro-Saddam Hussein slogans, that inflamed the national guardsmen. They began shooting volleys into the air, scattering the group.

At the outskirts of the crowd, another woman in black, wept. Her husband was a tea-seller who had worked on the street for 15 years, and her son washed cars in the adjoining shop. "Where are they? Where are they?" she wailed. "I feel in my heart something terrible has happened to them."

40yearfan · July 19th, 2004, 08:25 AM

Discouraging because these things are still happening. Encouraging because some of the people are starting to wake up and realize that they need to start depending on themselves for security and governing of their own country.