State television reported Tuesday that 18 boys were killed when a car bomb exploded in a park in Ramadi, and Iraqi and international officials were quick to deplore the slaughter. But questions about key details of the report emerged just as quickly.
Iraqi police and state TV said the attack occurred Tuesday. Later, police said it happened Monday.
The confusion grew deeper following an announcement by U.S. forces that 30 civilians and one Iraqi soldier were injured by flying debris Tuesday when troops intentionally detonated 15 bags of explosives found in Ramadi.
Some of the wounded were treated at a U.S. aid station, and others were flown to a military hospital for treatment, the statement said. None of the injuries was life-threatening, it added.
The news first broke after nightfall when it is too dangerous for local journalists to check the reports independently in Ramadi, a Sunni insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad. Western reporters normally tour the area only as part of military patrols. Much of Ramadi is under effective insurgent control, and even the police have difficulty establishing the facts in bombings and assassinations.
Broad condemnation
Meanwhile, reports that the boys were killed touched off a flurry of condemnation.
UNICEF, the U.N.’s children’s agency, issued a statement saying, “The loss of so many innocent children at play is unacceptable.”
“Iraq’s recreational areas, as well as its schools, must be respected and protected as safe havens where children can play and learn without fear,” said Roger Wright, the UNICEF representative for Iraq.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s office issued a statement denouncing the deaths and calling on Iraqi security forces to “chase and punish the criminals.”
Another statement from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office called the boys’ deaths “a brutal act” that “reveals the ugly face” of terrorists. The prime minister’s statement described the attack as coming Tuesday.
But an official in al-Maliki’s office said they based the date on the Iraqi TV report. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public comments.
A prominent Sunni cleric called the attack evidence of terrorists’ “deficit and weakness.”
“They (terrorists) have neither religion nor dignity,” Sheik Hameed al-Hayes told state television.
10 die in Baghdad bombings
In Baghdad on Tuesday, at least 10 people were killed in bombings amid a security operation launched this month targeting militant factions and sectarian death squads that have ruled the capital’s streets.
As part of the sweeps, U.S. and Iraqi forces staged raids in Baghdad’s main Shiite militant stronghold, making politically sensitive forays into areas loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Sadr withdrew his Mahdi Army militia from checkpoints and bases under intense government pressure to let the neighbor-by-neighbor security sweeps move ahead. But al-Maliki and others have opposed extensive U.S.-led patrols through Sadr City, fearing a violent backlash could derail the security effort.
The predawn 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?”
Sadr City tactics: No comment
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 strike across central Baghdad, including a suicide attack in an area filled with restaurants and ice cream parlors that killed at least five people.
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.
At least 6 police slain in Mosul
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, 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 was injured.
The aide 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 is Sunni.
And 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.
