Baghdad Blasts and Attacks Kill Dozens

28/02/2006| IslamWeb

A series of explosions have rocked Baghdad killing at least 32 people and wounding 80, while another blast damaged the tomb of Saddam Hussein's father. 

The blasts came hours before the former leader was due back in court for the first time since a week of sectarian violence in Iraq.

Police said a Sunni mosque in Baghdad was also damaged by a bomb on Tuesday morning.

Police also discovered nine bodies near the religiously mixed city of Baquba, the scene of several sectarian attacks since a suspected al-Qaida bomb destroyed a Shia shrine on Wednesday.

A Reuters photographer counted at least 10 dead bodies after a car exploded on a busy street in central Baghdad, just across the Tigris river from where Saddam is on trial in one of his former palaces.

Two others went off in the east of the city. At least 23 people were killed in one bombing at a petrol station in eastern Baghdad, with 51 wounded, police sources said.

Two British soldiers were killed in Amara, 360km southeast of Baghdad, and US forces reported the death of an American soldier.

A Saddam-era, Soviet-built Iraqi tank guarded a Sunni mosque in west Baghdad and Iraqi and US military patrols were seen around the city.

Overnight curfews remain in force across Iraq.

The dome of the shrine Saddam had erected over his father's grave in the cemetery of his Sunni home town of Tikrit was damaged, local residents said, and windows and doors blown out.

Police and local government officials said explosives planted at the tomb had gone off around 6am (0300 GMT).

The former president, who has ended a hunger strike staged in protest at trial conditions, is due in court after a two-week adjournment.

Saddam has justified some of the oppressive policies of his Sunni-dominated rule over three decades as necessary to hold Iraq together amid tensions between the Sunnis and Shia Arabs as well as the ethnic Kurds in the north.

He and seven others are being tried for crimes against humanity in the killings of 148 Shia villagers in 1982.

His defence team, two of whom were killed after the trial began in October, accuse the Shia - and Kurdish-led government of running a political show trial supported by the United States.

The sectarian crisis may be followed by dramatic court room scenes when Saddam returns to his trial.

"I hate to see any Iraqi shed a single drop of blood," the former leader was quoted as saying by a lawyer who visited him to prepare his defence.

Saddam says oppressive policies by his Sunni-dominated government for three decades prevented civil war.

The 68-year-old former president ended an 11-day hunger strike for "health reasons", lawyers said, and his defence team would also end a boycott and appear in court on Tuesday.

The hunger strike and lawyers' walkout were in protest at proceedings, which have also been marred by the resignation of the chief judge and the killing of two defence lawyers.

Bodies found

On Tuesday morning, nine bullet-riddled bodies were found off a road southeast of Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

Dr Ahmed Fuad Ghaidan, head of the facility's forensic department, said the bodies were taken to Baquba General Hospital.

The Iraqi army found the bodies near two burned minibuses in an open area off the road from Baghdad into Iraq's strife prone Diyala province, Diyala police said.

The victims included Shaikh Hamid Irbat Ghazi of the influential Mahamda tribe, and two of his nephews, police said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqi soldiers aboard an army tank, patrol near the Sunni al-Nidda mosque, in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Feb.28, 2006. (AP)