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Bus station blast kills 22 in Baghdad

The explosion also injured more than 50 people and incinerated about 40 minibuses.

By TIMES WIRES
Published June 29, 2007

BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded Thursday at a bus station in a mostly Shiite west Baghdad neighborhood, killing 22 people. Officials received word that 20 decapitated bodies had been found near the capital but were unable to confirm the report because of fighting.

In addition to the dead, more than 50 people were wounded in the rush-hour blast in the Baiyaa neighborhood, police said.

A huge fireball incinerated about 40 minibuses as people were lining up to catch rides to work, police and survivors said.

No group claimed responsibility for the blast, but suspicion fell on Sunni militants.

Baiyaa is a mixed neighborhood with a Shiite majority, part of a string of neighborhoods just south of the main road to Baghdad International Airport where sectarian tensions have been running high.

U.S. and Iraqi commanders have launched operations in towns and villages around the capital in hopes of stopping the flow of car bombs into Baghdad, where thousands of American troops have been deployed since February to try to restore order.

One American soldier was killed Thursday and another was wounded by a roadside bombing during a combat patrol in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

To the south, two policemen said villagers had reported finding 20 beheaded bodies near the Sunni Muslim village of Um al-Abeed. The village is near the city of Salman Pak, 15 miles southeast of the capital.

Villagers said the victims were all men ages 20 to 40 and that their hands and legs had been bound, the officers said.

Salman Pak and the surrounding area have been the focus of new U.S. military operations to oust extremists from Baghdad's outskirts.

Both Sunni and Shiite extremists operate in the area.

Outside Baghdad, American troops reported dismantling 10 car-bomb "factories" this year, including three this month.

Whether those actions are responsible for a precipitous drop in car bombings in the capital this month is unclear. The Iraqi government declared a four-day curfew earlier this month that banned traffic in the capital. That curfew may have been a factor in the decline.

Data that McClatchy Newspapers gathered show that as of midday Thursday, 17 car bombs have exploded in the capital this month, a drop from February's peak of 45. From December through May, car bombings in Baghdad averaged 36 a month, according to the data, which McClatchy collects from Iraqi officials and independent sources.

Fast Facts:

Developments on Thursday

-The British military said three British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Iraq.

-An Iraqi legislator accused the U.S. Embassy of providing shelter to Culture Minister Asad Kamal al-Hashimi, a Sunni under investigation in the 2005 assassination attempt against the lawmaker.

-A call by radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for thousands of Iraqis to march to a twice-bombed shrine in the predominantly Sunni Muslim city of Samarra next week has set off alarms among U.S. and Iraqi officials, who fear the demonstration will worsen sectarian tensions and become a bloodbath. Sadr said the pilgrimage to the Askariya shrine, whose bombing in February 2006 has been blamed for accelerating sectarian violence, is intended as a display of unity between Sunnis and Shiites.

[Last modified June 29, 2007, 00:50:14]