Baghdad, Iraq – Car bombs and a rocket barrage struck a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 62 people, a municipal official said. The rockets apparently were fired from a mostly Sunni district targeted by U.S. troops in a crackdown against the sectarian violence roiling the capital.
About 140 were injured in the attack on the Zafraniyah neighborhood in southern Baghdad, which began about 7:15 p.m. with two car bombs and a barrage of an estimated nine rockets, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Saddoun Abu al-Ula said.
He said the barrage heavily damaged three buildings, including a multistory apartment house that collapsed. Al-Ula said the rockets appeared to have been fired from the neighborhood of Dora, which has been the focus of thousands of U.S. troops sent to try to restore peace in Baghdad.
The complex style of the assault was similar to a July 27 attack of mortars, rockets and car bombs on another mostly Shiite district, Karradah, which killed 31 people. Police said the rockets and mortars that struck Karradah also were fired from Dora.
A Sunni extremist group, the al-Sahaba Soldiers, claimed responsibility for the Karradah attack to punish Shiites for supporting the “crusaders,” or Americans, and the “treacherous” Iraqi government.
Muhanna Yassin, who lives in Zafraniyah, said the attack left the neighborhood “a total mess” with “bodies of the dead and injured scattered around in the streets – old, young, women and children.”
“The ground shook underneath us, and there was chaos everywhere,” he said in a telephone interview. “Everyone was dazed and confused, looking for their families. Some children and grown-ups were crying. I can’t even begin describing their state.”
Earlier Sunday, the U.S. command announced that soldiers of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division had arrested a key terrorist-cell leader who was “directly linked” to the July 17 attack on an outdoor market in Mahmudiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad.
Also Sunday, the top U.S. general visited Fallujah. On his first visit to the city as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace stood before 1,300 troops – mostly Marines – and assured them that the American public supports them.
However, more than half, 58 percent, of respondents said in a Newsweek poll out over the weekend that the United States is losing ground in Iraq and opposition to the war has been growing.
