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Iraqi Shiite pilgrims massacred ahead of Bush speech
By Abdelamir Hanun
AFP
KARBALA, Iraq
Petroleumworld.com 01 11 07Eleven Iraqi Shiites returning from the annual hajj pilgrimage were shot dead in cold blood Wednesday, underscoring the horrors US President George W. Bush hopes to curb with a strategy shift.
At least 18 Iraqis died in bombings and shootings as Bush prepared to announce the deployment of 21,500 more troops in a bid to stem the bloodletting and the authorities also made gruesome discoveries of 60 corpses in Baghdad.
In one of the worst such attacks in Iraq to mar this year's Muslim pilgrimage, the 11 Shiites were killed when masked gunmen stopped their bus returning home from Saudi Arabia, Karbala governor Akil al-Khazali said.
Another 14 were wounded, most of them seriously, after the gunmen travelling in three cars leapt aboard the large bus and pumped bullets at random into the passengers, 130 kilometres (80 miles) west of Karbala, he said.
Khazali said the attack happened near the border with the violent Sunni province of Al-Anbar, implying that the ambush was the handiwork of Sunni gunmen involved in Iraq's unprecedented sectarian unrest.
In northern Iraq, four people were killed and 12 hurt when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded market in the Al-Khadra neighbourhood of Tal Afar, the northern town's councillor Brigadier General Najem Abdullah said.
Abdullah's own vehicle had earlier in the day come under car bomb attack in Mosul, the third largest city of Iraq. He was not in the vehicle at the time but his driver was wounded, police Major Mohammed Ahmed said.
Two other people -- a woman and a male nurse -- were killed in Mosul when gunmen opened fire at random inside a central bus terminal and separately raided a private clinic in the Qahira neighbourhood, Ahmed added.
In Baghdad, four civilians were wounded in two roadside bomb attacks, one of which also ruptured a water pipeline supplying the impoverished Shiite slum district of Sadr City, said a security source on condition of anonymity.
South of Baghdad, a civilian was killed and three were wounded when a car rigged with explosives blew up at a gas station in Mahmudiyah, gutting the place, said an interior ministry source.
In a separate statement about the same incident, the US military said two local residents were wounded when insurgents detonated a double truck bomb near a gas station in Mahmudiyah not far from where the city council was meeting.
The military also announced the recent deaths of three more US soldiers in fighting in Iraq, two in Al-Anbar and the third in the flashpoint province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad.
In what has become a constant curse in sectarian-torn Iraq, the bodies of at least 60 men were discovered in Baghdad, their hands cuffed and their eyes blindfolded, said a security source.
Another two unidentified bodies were found dumped in Mosul, Ahmed said.
The latest unrest came as Bush prepared to unveil a long-awaited new plan to bring Iraq back from the brink of total chaos, in a speech in which he is to announce that at least another 20,000 American troops will be sent to the war-torn country.
AFP 10 1807 GMT 01 07
Copyright© 2001 AFP.All Rights Reserved.
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