http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1527861,00.html
An injured Iraqi boy stands at the scene of a suicide car bomb attack in Baghdad that targeted US soldiers near a crowd of children. Photograph: Hadi Mizban/APA suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle near US troops and a crowd of children in Baghdad today, killing 27 people and wounding at least 67 more, according to Iraq’s interior ministry.
A duty policeman at the Kindi hospital said 25 bodies and 25 wounded had arrived there. “Most of them are children,” he said. The US military said one of its soldiers was among those killed and three were injured.
“The vehicle, laden with explosives, drove up to a [US military] Humvee before detonating. Many Iraqi civilians, mostly children, were around the Humvee at the time of the blast,” Sergeant David Abrams said.
The US military denied earlier police reports that troops had been handing out sweets.
“The car bomber made a deliberate decision to attack one of our vehicles as the soldiers were engaged in a peaceful operation with Iraqi citizens,” said Major Russ Goemaere. “The terrorist undoubtedly saw the children around the Humvee as he attacked.”
“My son was lucky. He was injured by a piece of shrapnel that lodged in his head. All the rest of his friends died,” said local man Abu Mohammed.
A Reuters television cameraman at the scene said the vehicle blew up near houses, reducing parts of three buildings to rubble. The incident was similar to a triple car bomb attack near a US convoy in September last year in which 41 people were killed, 34 of them children.
Suicide bombings, including car bombs and strikes by bombers on foot with explosive vests, have increased since the Shia- and Kurdish-led government took power in April.
On Sunday, a bomber wearing an explosive vest killed about 20 people at an army recruiting station in Baghdad. A week earlier another bomber killed a similar number at a recruiting station for police.
Police in Jalowla near the Iranian border said a bomb that killed two people in a Sunni mosque there overnight may have been the result of a suicide bomber preparing an attack when his bomb detonated early.
US forces say most suicide bombings are carried out by foreign Sunni extremists loyal to groups such al-Qaida in Iraq, which is led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Washington said overnight that its forces had captured a senior Zarqawi lieutenant operating in Baghdad.
Iraq’s mounting violence is dividing the country along ethnic and sectarian lines at a time when US forces are hoping to withdraw without leaving behind civil war.
While most victims of insurgent attacks are Shia killed by Sunni bombers and gunmen, Sunnis say the mainly Shia police respond by rounding up Sunni men and killing some of them.
Iraqi security forces stormed several houses in Baghdad earlier today and detained 13 people, including a Sunni cleric, before torturing and killing most of them, according to the influential Association of Muslim Scholars.
The incident is the second within four days in which members of the Iraqi security forces have Sunni lives, a spokesman for the group claimed.
Dozens of members of an interior ministry commando brigade stormed several houses in Baghdad’s northern suburbs before dawn and detained Sunni cleric Dia Mohammed al-Janabi as well as 12 others, Sheik Hassan Sabri Salman said.
The men were taken to an apartment in the nearby neighbourhood of Habibiyah “where they were locked in a small room and tortured before being executed.” Twelve bodies, including that of the cleric, were found in a street in the Shia neighborhood of Sadr City. “We don’t know the fate of the 13th,” he said.
In the same district as this morning’s raids, an angry crowd of mourners carried three coffins through the streets. They said they contained the dead from among a group of 13 or 14 men arrested by police on Monday and found dead in a Baghdad morgue yesterday, showing signs of beatings and torture. An interior ministry spokesman said the incident was under investigation.
A senior ministry official also acknowledged that up to 10 Sunni Arabs had suffocated in a police vehicle while in custody on Sunday, and said those responsible will stand trial.
Police took the building site labourers from a hospital where they were visiting relatives following an attack against an interior ministry patrol in western Baghdad. The men died after being held for several hours in an unventilated vehicle in temperatures of 45C.