Kufa, Iraq – A suicide car bomber attacked a crowded market in this holy Shiite city Tuesday, killing at least 16 people, injuring more than 70 and further stoking rising tensions between rival Shiite militias.
The bomb was detonated in a gray sedan beside a restaurant and across the street from a girls’ primary school.
A mob immediately gathered at the grisly scene, surrounding the blast’s crater and violently blamed U.S. forces and the Iraqi police for allowing the attack.
Most of the police are linked in the area to the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, the country’s biggest Shiite political party.
The protesters, joined by members of the area’s rival Shiite militia, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, blocked the police and security forces from entering the area, and three responding ambulances were destroyed. Many of the injured eventually were piled into pickup trucks for the trip to nearby hospitals.
The incident represented the latest skirmish in recent days between the two sides in far-reaching sections of the country, including places such as Baghdad, Diwaniyah, Basra and Najaf, which abuts Kufa 100 miles south of Baghdad. Both militias are tied to political groups that are vying for dominance among Iraq’s Shiite majority.
Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sa’id Hakim sought to stamp down the intra-sectarian dispute and blamed the bombing instead on “the terrorists and the Sad damists, who continue their criminal show that started when the Saddam (Hussein) regime fell.”
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting a U.S. convoy instead killed three Iraqi civilians and injured five as they rode in a minibus in the Zafariniya neighborhood of the city.
