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electronicIraq.net
War Every Day (eIraq Blog)
Iraqi witnesses to yesterday's Eid bombings
Jeff Severns Guntzel, Electronic Iraq
Oct 3, 2008
About two dozen Iraqis celebrating the end of the holy month of Ramadan were killed in yesterday's suicide attacks in two predominantly Shi'ite neighborhoods. Here are a handful of witness accounts:
At the al-Rasoul mosque in the neighborhood of New Baghdad:
A suicide bomber who has been described as a teenage boy with an explosives vest blew himself up as as guards were searching him near the entrance to the mosque. It was not quite eight in the morning.
From the New York Times:
The congregation had overflowed from the
ornate 50-year-old prayer hall ... many people were praying
in the street.
From AFP:
Iraqi policeman Ali Abdul Hussein, 33, said the bombing would have been more serious had the bomber made it inside the building.
"I saw a man rushing to the checkpoint just outside the mosque," he told AFP. "I noticed his belt and shouted to my colleagues to stop the man. I also ran towards him but two colleagues ahead of me stopped the man."
Just then, the bomber detonated the explosives, killing the two policemen and sending Abdul Hussein flying. Wounded in the leg, he returned to the mosque after taking victims to hospital.
"If my two friends had not stopped the bomber outside, there would have been many more killed at the mosque," he sobbed.
+ + +
Mosque security chief Mohammed Borhan, 29, pointed to the sidewalk where the suicide bomber's head landed, face to the sky. It was a few yards (meters) away from where the man detonated his explosives.
Borhan filmed the remains of the bomber. The man's face was almost perfectly intact, with eyes wide open and a hint of bewilderment.
Slippers and shoes of those killed and wounded in the attack were scattered on the roadside.
From McClatchy:
Bystanders were told not to help the wounded, said Mohammed Abu Mustafa, 45, who witnessed the blast. "The guards were shouting at people not to get close to the area because they feared there would be another explosion," he said.
At a mosque in the Zafaraniyah neighborhood:
The Zafaraniyah explosion, about four miles away, happened at about the same time--according to the New York Times account, "Iraqi soldiers said a car bomber rammed his Russian-made Volga taxi into an armored Iraqi Army Humvee, which was guarding the entrance to a Shi'ite mosque."
From the New York Times:
Iraqi troops had mounted a checkpoint just in front a
small, blue-domed Shiite mosque, using a Humvee armored vehicle that
was destroyed but which prevented the bomber’s car from reaching the
mosque itself, witnesses and others said.
Outside the mosque in Zafaraniya, on a dusty street, shattered car windows and damaged building facades bore witness to the attack. Jamal Tawfiq, 28, who had a black plastic bag closely tied around his right hand to protect it, collected body parts and placed them in a separate yellow bag. “They were targeting the prayers in the mosque,” he said. “Nobody expects anything like this on Id al-Fitr.”
But in truth, the Iraqi security forces had predicted just such an attack, after numerous Sunni insurgent bombings during previous Shiite festivals. Iraqi and American officials said the Humvee was posted there for just that reason.
In a separate attack, gunmen opened fire upon a minibus from a speeding car, killing six Sunnis in the predominantly Shiite town of Wajihiyah, north of
Baghdad.
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