Baghdad, Iraq – A car bomb exploded today near a park popular with young soccer players, killing at least 18 boys in a city west of Baghdad known as a center of the Sunni insurgency, police said.
The attack occurred just three days after more than 50 people were killed outside a mosque in a nearby village where the imam had spoken out against the group al-Qaida in Iraq – pointing to an increasingly bloody attempts to silence its opponents.
But the deaths of the boys, aged 10 to 15, left authorities grasping for a possible motive.
The bomb-rigged car blew apart late this afternoon while the boys were playing in central Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad. Both local police and state television said 18 boys died.
The Interior Ministry did not immediately return calls for further details of the attack. U.S. Marines are stationed near Ramadi.
It was not immediately known if the children were the intended targets, but young people are often caught in Iraq’s daily bloodshed. On Sunday, more than 40 people, mostly college students, were killed in a bombing outside a mostly Shiite college in Baghdad.
In July 2005, a suicide bombing in Baghdad killed 27 people, including 18 children and an American soldier. A moment of silence across Iraq was later held.
But now, the violence has become so frequent and numbing that it’s possible the boys’ death will pass without any special note.
At least 10 people were killed in bombings in Baghdad, where a security operation was launched earlier this month targeting militant factions and sectarian death squads that have ruled Baghdad’s streets.
As part of the sweeps, U.S. and Iraqi forces staged raids in Baghdad’s main Shiite militant stronghold in politically sensitive forays into areas loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Sadr withdrew his powerful Mahdi Army militia from checkpoints and bases under intense government pressure to let the neighbor-by-neighbor security sweeps move ahead. But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and others have opposed extensive U.S.-led patrols through Sadr City, fearing a violent backlash could derail the security effort.
The pre-dawn raids appeared to highlight a strategy of pinpoint strikes in Sadr City rather than the flood of soldiers sent into some Sunni districts.
At least 16 people were arrested after U.S.-Iraqi commandos – using concussion grenades – stormed six homes, police said.
The U.S. military statement said the raids targeted “the leadership of several rogue” Mahdi Army cells that “direct and perpetrate sectarian murder” – an apparent reference to Shiite gangs accused of carrying out execution-style slayings and torture on Sunni rivals.
“My sons and wife were very terrified,” complained Muhand Mihbas, 30, who said his brother and six cousins were taken in the sweeps. “Does the security plan mean arresting innocent people and scaring civilians at night?” At a news conference, the Pentagon’s No. 2 commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, declined to comment on whether there were special tactics for Sadr City. “We will go after anyone who we feel is working against the government of Iraq,” he said.
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told Al-Arabiya television that forces “will increase our operations in the coming days,” but noted that the security crackdown in the capital should continue until at least October.
Added Odierno: “We will keep at this until the people feel safe in their neighborhoods.” A roadside bomb southwest of the capital killed three U.S.
soldiers assigned to a unit based in Baghdad, the military said. A fourth soldier was killed near Diwaniyah, a mostly Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad.
Bombings continued to hit across central Baghdad, including a suicide attack in an area filled with restaurants and ice cream parlors that killed at least five people.
Battles and violence also raged in other parts of Iraq.
In the Wassit province, southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi forces engaged in intense fighting with suspected Sunni insurgents along a key highway, police said. Near the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber struck a factory, killing at least four people.
A separate suicide car bombing in Mosul killed at least six policemen and injured 38 police and civilians, said police said police Col. Aidan al-Jubouri.
Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, have arrested a suspect in the attempted assassination of Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, an aide said.
The aide said the arrest was made after reviewing security camera video from Monday’s blast, which ripped through an awards ceremony at the ministry of public works and killed at least 10 people. Abdul-Mahdi received leg injuries and was briefly hospitalized.
The aide declined to give any further details about the arrest or the suspect. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
The bomb was planted under a chair in the first row of the meeting hall – about six feet from the vice president, the aide said. Police initially thought the bomb was hidden under a speakers’ podium.
“Investigations are being done to figure out how the attack was planned,” Abdul-Mahdi told Furat television. Abdul-Mahdi is one of two vice presidents. The other, Tariq al-Hashemi, is Sunni.
Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, remained in a Jordan hospital but no medical tests were planned, according to the Iraqi ambassador.
“He’s in good shape, fully aware and doing well,” Ambassador Saad al-Hayyani told The Associated Press. “There are no tests planned today.” The ambassador declined to say when Talabani would leave the King Hussein Medical City in Amman.
Talabani, from Iraq’s Kurdish north, was taken to Amman after falling unconscious Sunday. He regained consciousness and his aides blamed the episode on fatigue and exhaustion.
His private physician, Dr. Yedgar Hishmat, said rumors Talabani had heart problems were “categorically wrong.” In the southern Qadisiya province, Iraqi security forces said they captured 157 suspects linked to a shadowy armed cell called the Soldiers of Heaven, or Jund al-Samaa.
The group was involved in a fierce gunbattle last month with Iraqi forces who accused it of planning to kill Shiite clerics and others in the belief it would hasten the return of the “Hidden Imam” – a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad who disappeared as a child in the 9th century. Shiites believe he will return one day to bring justice.
