On 1 July 2006, at around 10:00 A.M, a
suicide car bombing at a crowded market in
Sadr City
Sadr City ( ar, مدينة الصدر, translit=Madīnat aṣ-Ṣadr), formerly known as Al-Thawra ( ar, الثورة, aṯ-Ṯawra) and Saddam City ( ar, مدينة صدام, Madīnat Ṣaddām), is a suburb district of the city of Baghdad, Iraq. ...
, a
Shi'ite
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...
district of
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...
, killed at least 77 people and wounded 96.
The car was a truck loaded with fruit, under which a "mix of explosives and artillery shells, with ball bearings nearly the size of marbles and scrap metal added for shrapnel
as hidden the Washington Post reports "The truck, with a suicide driver at the wheel, blew up on a street crowded on both sides with shops and market stalls, leaving a crater the size of a wading pool in the pavement." The bomb was powerful enough to propel some bodies onto the roofs of houses. The bomb destroyed 22 stalls and sent up a grey plume of smoke. Fire shot out of the windows of some cars (14 cars were destroyed).
A group calling themselves The Supporters of the Sunni People claimed responsibility for the attack. The group accused
Shi'ite's of "killing Sunnis and throwing their bodies in the streets after badly torturing them. It added that Sunni women under detention were being raped by Shiites." CBS news reports.
The attack was the deadliest to come to
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
since the death of
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
After the attack, and while firefighters were putting out the fire, an angry mob gathered around the wreckage and shouted allegiance to radical Shiite cleric
Moktada al-Sadr, while denouncing the
Sunni people and the new Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki
Nouri Kamil Muhammad-Hasan al-Maliki ( ar, نوري المالكي; born 20 June 1950), also known as Jawad al-Maliki (), is secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party and was the prime minister of Iraq from 2006 to 2014 and the vice president ...
and his government.
See also
*
Sadr City terrorist attacks
*
Siege of Sadr City
The Siege of Sadr City was a blockade of the Shi'a district of northeastern Baghdad carried out by U.S. and Iraqi government forces in an attempt to destroy the main power base of the insurgent Mahdi Army in Baghdad. The siege began on 4 April ...
References
External links
Iraq violence: Facts and figures
2006 murders in Iraq
2006 in Baghdad
21st-century mass murder in Iraq
July 2006 events in Iraq
Marketplace attacks in Iraq
Mass murder in 2006
Suicide car and truck bombings in Iraq
Terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2006
Terrorist incidents in Sadr City
Sadr City in the Iraq War
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