Market blast kills 15 civilians

BODIES lay scattered on the ground and strewn among the wreckage of cars, still smouldering from the twin blasts that hit a residential street in Baghdad without warning yesterday morning.

A pregnant woman lay among the dead, as, all around her, people began the grim task of tending to the injured and gathering up the bloodstained bodies of those they could not help.

Iraq says the blast in the city’s al-Shaab neighbourhood claimed 15 lives and injured 30, the worst reported incidence of civilian casualties in the conflict so far.

On either side of the street, where minutes earlier mechanics had been hard at work bent over cars, lay flattened vehicles and damaged buildings.

Panic and confusion gripped the marketplace as men tried to douse the wreckage of burned-out cars and women in chadors grabbed the hands of their children and fled the scene.

But as the flames rose high above the cluster of burning shops to mingle with the thick black smoke from fuel fires over the city, before the fire engines and ambulances had reached the area, the mood quickly changed from fear to anger.

An enraged crowd of several hundred Iraqis, some carrying bloodied bodies, others waving the shoes and clothes of the victims, took to the street yelling slogans in support of Saddam Hussein and denouncing the US president, George Bush.

"We will sacrifice our blood and souls for you Saddam," they chanted. "Down with Bush."

"This is barbarian!" shouted Adnan Saleh Barseem. "It’s proof that their aggression is collapsing."

But last night, as confusion continued to reign over the cause of the explosion, relatives of the dead spoke only of their grief and sadness.

Ziad Khaled’s eyes welled with tears when he spoke of the bomb that killed his aunt and two cousins. "She died in my own arms," the taxi driver said of his cousin Maha, 11, a schoolgirl.

Around al-Shaab, a busy street in the north of the capital, residential blocks sit above rows of around 30 ground-floor shops, restaurants and workshops.

Iraqi defence officials, who said that two cruise missiles hit the area at 11:30 , said the area had no military facilities.

Immediately after the explosion, the fog of war descended over who was responsible. US and British military officials said that they had no information and one military chief even hinted that they believed Saddam’s regime might have been responsible. Then a US military spokesman at Central Command in Qatar said that coalition aircraft were targeting missiles and launchers in a residential area of Baghdad at around the time of the explosion. Later, a Pentagon spokesman said, that while no bombs or missiles were fired at the district, he could not rule out a stray missile.

The attack left residents stunned and many homeless. Salah Aziz stood dazed beside the ruins of the building where he had lived with his family. "I don’t know where to go," he said. "I haven’t got anywhere else."

Emad Ali, an Egyptian with a restaurant in the street, said three of his waiters had been killed.

"Luckily there were no customers at the time of the attack or more people would have died," he said.

The blast followed an attempt by US and British forces to cripple the regime’s communications in a raid that knocked Iraq’s satellite TV signal off the air for several hours in the early hours of yesterday.

A barrage of at least 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles pounded the main television station, in a strike that also included bombing runs by British warplanes.

Black smoke billowed from the building’s roof, near the information ministry on the west bank of the Tigris after the attack.

By early afternoon, the city had an apocalyptic look as the rain mixed with the pervasive smoke and sand from the earlier sandstorm, turning the air black. Cars were driven with their headlights on and street lights were switched on.

The attack knocked out Iraqi state television, which was not broadcasting at the time, for around 45 minutes, but by 6am, it was back on air.

Iraqi Satellite TV, which broadcasts 24 hours a day outside Iraq, went off the air around 4:30am but went back on the air about eight hours later. However, there was no trace of al-Shabab television, the station owned by Saddam’s son Uday, which is normally transmitted from the state television building.

There was little respite for the city’s residents yesterday, as a series of further explosions pounded the capital, each seeming louder than the last. Heavy air raids continued to the south and south-east of the city, where units of Iraq’s Republican Guard were believed to be dug in to defend Baghdad against coalition forces. Warplanes were also heard roaring through the night skies.