(Updated: Originally posted December 13, 2006)
"Truck Bomb Kills 70 Iraqis as the Poor Gather for Jobs" by SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Dec. 12 — A truck loaded with bags of wheat drove up to a crowd of poor Shiites early Tuesday, lured them close with a promise of work and exploded as they gathered around. Seventy people were killed and 236 were wounded.
The attack, in a square in central Baghdad, together with bodies found by Iraqi authorities, pushed the day’s deaths across Iraq to at least 131, the highest total since a bombing killed more than 200 here last month. Shiite political leaders often point to such attacks, arguing that they, not the American military, should control security here.
The bombing in Baghdad followed a grimly familiar pattern. Day laborers, whose wages average about $11 a day, gathered in the early morning chill to wait for offers of work. Shortly before 7 a.m., a small Kia truck drove up, loaded with bags of wheat.
A worker who had been standing in the area when the blast occurred:
“The owner got down and shouted, ‘I need laborers to unload!’”
Just as the workers gathered, the truck exploded, scattering grain in all directions, scarring the facade of a three-story building, wounding scores of workers and gouging out a crater nearly 10 feet wide.
The immediate aftermath was also familiar. Brothers, fathers and sons sought each other. One man, slightly wounded, repeated the name of a Shiite saint. He was grabbing at bodies in a tangled heap, looking for his brother, Maitham Ali, a 41-year-old worker who was there when the bomb went off. He found him still alive and lifted him into a car.
The wounded were taken to Kindi Hospital, which has one of the city’s primary emergency rooms, but which declined badly in recent months, said the director, Flayeh Hassan. The hospital has lost large numbers of doctors and nurses, as many middle-class Iraqis have fled the country. There is not enough money to buy basic supplies.
Shiite workers, still scraping rubble out of blood-stained puddles at noon, angrily accused the United States of failing to protect them.
Let's hear from some Iraqis:
Waleed Hussein, a hardware store owner, whose two brothers and son were wounded, was standing in front of his crumpled shop shortly before noon, piling debris into hardhats and buckets, and thought there had been a second bomb, delivered moments later on a motorcycle, though the police did not confirm it:
“The security portfolio is still being held by the Americans. We put all this on their shoulders.”
Swadi Hussein, 28, a witness, who sells second hand clothes at the market on the square, said he saw a pickup driver approach the square before 7 a.m., collect several workers, and leave, then soon after, a second driver appeared, slamming into a group of workers and detonating his car, and after police responded to the first blast, the pickup driver returned, drove into the patrol, and detonated his truck:
"As soon as the first explosion happened I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn't move. I was too shocked to do anything."
Hussein blacked out and came to in the hospital with glass embedded in his head.
Kadhim Thijil, a 40-year-old construction worker from the southern city of Nasiriya, said he needed stitches that were costing more money than he had. He saved his small daily earnings and sent about $30 to his family each week.
Ali Naji, 32, avoided Tayaran Square as long as he could, but returned yesterday because he desperately needed the money and one of the car bombs exploded as he watched a group of fellow laborers eating breakfast:
"I saw their flesh shattered."
Hussein Abdul Jabbar, 37, a father of four and a former carpenter who came to wait in the square with his brother last week, who lives in the Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City, said he and other workers try to stay safe by avoiding majority Sunni neighborhoods, but they can't afford to avoid the square:
"The lucky ones are well off if they had one or two days work during the past two weeks."
Hassan Jabbar, 40, a demolition specialist who waited in the square with his brother last week, said the civil war forced his former employers to flee overseas, afraid of being killed, kidnapped, or held hostage, and he blamed the US and Iraqi governments for failing to stabilize the country:
"The situation before the war was much better. Work was always available, whether in the private or public sectors, and we could travel to any place without any fear."
Talk about the indictment of a FAILED POLICY and FAILED LEADER!!!!
How about that last Iraqi voice, huh?
Meanwhile:
At least 59 other Iraqis were also killed or found dead yesterday, including an AP Television News cameraman, Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, who was shot while covering clashes in the northern city of Mosul.
This morning, another car bomb killed at least 10 people and wounded 25 in east Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source told Reuters.
Abdul-Kareem Khalaf, the Interior Ministry's chief of operations, said the attack was retaliation for raids by ministry investigators who killed 17 insurgents and detained 32 others.
Workers at Tayaran are poor, mostly Shi'ite Muslims. Some are professionals, college graduates who lost their jobs and businesses as Iraq's economy faltered over the past three years. Others are craftsmen unable to find steady work.
As jobs dry up, workers are becoming more desperate. In an Iraqi work force of 7 million, that's at least 4.5 million functionally unemployed."
Additional information also used for post taken from:
"Looking for work, Iraqi laborers meet death; 76 killed, 200 hurt in suicide attack in Baghdad square" by Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Said Rifai/Los Angeles Times December 13, 2006
