BAGHDAD — A top U.S. general said Saturday that the perpetrators of Friday’s suicide bombings in Baghdad — the deadliest attacks in the capital in nine months — may have been mentally impaired teenaged girls who carried out the attacks unwittingly.
A British forensic expert cautioned, however, that suggesting the two bombers had Down syndrome based on photographs of their severed heads was “dangerous.” He noted that the heads would have suffered massive trauma when the bombers’ explosives detonated.
“The diagnosis would have to be more scientific than that,” said Bob Lamburne, the director of forensic services for the British embassy here.
Questions about the bombers’ mental capacity came as Iraqi officials raised the death toll from Friday’s bombings of two pet markets in Baghdad to 99, making them the deadliest attacks in the capital since April. At least 125 people were wounded, and some of those may still die from their injuries, authorities said.
At a news conference, Army Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, who commands U.S. forces in Baghdad, showed reporters photos of the bombers’ heads, which typically are blown from the body in suicide attacks. He said the broad foreheads, flattened noses and almond-shaped eyes were all suggestive of Down syndrome.
“These two women were likely used because they didn’t understand what was happening and they were less likely to be searched,” he said.
But Hammond also acknowledged that authorities had yet to identify the two women and that there was no other evidence of their mental condition.
Lamburne, who helped open Iraq’s National Forensics Institute in Baghdad last year, said that the violent explosion that rips a head from its neck would also affect muscles, bones and arteries and could distort the face. The explosion probably would exert pressure on the face similar to G-forces experienced by pilots, Lamburne said.
