Bomb Blast Kills 29 in Baghdad's Sadr City
30 October 2006
Iraqi officials say a bomb blast in Baghdad's Sadr City district has killed at least 29 people and wounded about 60 others.
The explosion went off Monday morning near a group of poor Shi'ite laborers gathered in a square to wait for job offers. Sadr City is a stronghold of Shi'ite militias in the Iraqi capital.
There has been no claim of responsibility for today's blast in Sadr City, which Sunni extremists have targeted in the past with bombs and mortars in a bid to provoke sectarian violence.
Also in Baghdad, gunmen shot dead a leading Iraqi academic as he left his home. Essam al-Rawi was a prominent Sunni political activist, and head of a university professors' association.
Meanwhile, reports say an Iraqi-American soldier kidnapped in Baghdad last week had secretly married an Iraqi woman, against U.S. Army rules. Relatives say the soldier was visiting his wife's family when militants abducted him.
U.S. troops have conducted extensive searches for the missing soldier in recent days.
In another development, the U.S. military says a Marine was killed in combat Sunday in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. One hundred U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq this month - the deadliest for the U.S. military since January 2005.
Elsewhere, Britain is preparing to evacuate civilian staff from the British consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. British officials say the measure is a temporary safety precaution following recent mortar and rocket attacks on the compound.
The British consul-general will remain at the complex, while civilian staff will relocate to an airport outside Basra.
Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
