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Car Bomb Kills at Least 31 Outside Iraqi Army Base
By EDWARD WONG
Published: June 17, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 17 — A suicide car bomb ripped into a throng of men waiting this morning to sign up for the new Iraqi Army outside the army's main recruiting station in the heart of the capital, killing at least 31 people and wounding more than 100, hospital officials said.
The bomb went off around 9 a.m. in the upscale Mansour neighborhood and sent a thick plume of smoke over the Baghdad skyline. The explosion threw bodies into the air and scattered them across a four-lane road. Cars burst into flames. Charred shrapnel rained from the sky.
The car bomb was the deadliest in months. It came after several days of powerful bombings in Baghdad, and at a critical time for the Iraqi Army. Many soldiers refused to fight during the uprising in April, and the Americans are now desperately trying to recruit and train a reliable force that can begin taking over security after June 30, when the interim Iraqi government will assume limited sovereignty.
But the explosion raised questions about whether the Americans and Iraqi security forces can even protect those men who are willing to sign up.
"I just heard a loud explosion, a strong explosion," said Abdullah Shadhan, 31, who had been waiting outside the recruiting center in sweltering heat with five cousins and 10 friends. I was thrown into the air.
"Then I blacked out for a couple of minutes. I didn't know what was happening. When I woke up, I didnt think I was injured. But I couldnt stand up. Something was wrong with my legs."
Mr. Shadhan was speaking as he coughed up blood in a bed in Yarmouk Hospital. An intravenous drip ran into his left arm. Dried blood covered his sheets. A man in a bed next to him held a white cloth over his head and moaned.
Tears welled up in Mr. Shadhan's eyes as he said that one of his cousins had been killed. He began sobbing. "I have seven children, and now what am I supposed to do?" he said.
He grabbed a bloody pink sheet from beneath his head and wiped away his tears.
The same recruiting station was hit by a suicide car bomb last February that killed dozens of men waiting in line. Though the front of the station was protected today by a perimeter of double-tiered sandbags, people at the scene said hundreds of recruits were forced to stand outside for hours. Many had come to listen for their names being called over a loudspeaker, which meant they could return for interviews.
"I was outside talking with an old friend from the army, and we were talking about how we wanted to join the army again," said Hassan Jasim, 35, a thin man lying in a hospital bed with white gauze bandages swathed around his forehead. "Then we heard the explosion. Some of the people with me are dead, some are injured, some escaped."
Many of the victims complained that there was neither security nor stability in Iraq, and that the Americans were to blame. The same mantra has been heard over and over from Iraqis following the bloody uprising in April. Hatred of the occupation is running higher than ever since the toppling of Saddam Hussein last year, and there appears to be no sign of any change of mood during this volatile summer.
A recent poll commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority showed that a majority of Iraqis want American soldiers to leave their country immediately.
"We were at the guard tower and saw injured people and bodies everywhere," said Ahmed Kadhum, 36, a military policeman working at the station. "There is no security. America is responsible for the lack of security here."
An hour after the bombing, soldiers from the First Cavalry Division and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a national militia, had sealed off the area. Humvees blocked the highway running past the recruiting station. Glass and metal parts littered the roadway right in front of the main gate. A blue sedan with a cracked windshield sat atop the median.
"I don't know who did this," said Lt. Col. Mike Murray, the commander of the American soldiers on the scene. "It's obviously like some other ones weve seen."
Ambulances from the Red Crescent raced back and forth along the road, their sirens wailing. Many of the dead and wounded were taken to three hospitals in the area. Officials at all three said they had received a total of at least 31 bodies and more than 100 wounded.
At Yarmouk Hospital, a doctor opened the door of a refrigerated morgue for a reporter. Male bodies lay strewn across the floor and in metal trays stacked on shelves along the walls. Some of the men were naked and covered in blood; others died with their eyes open. White sheets covered several corpses.
In the lobby, a woman dressed in full black robes screamed for her son.
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