Gunmen kill 50 in raid on market near Baghdad

updated 10:21 p.m. ET July 17, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen sprayed grenades and automatic weapons fire in a market south of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 50 people, mostly Shiites. The sectarian attack drew an angry protest from lawmakers who accused Iraqi forces of standing idly by during the rampage.

Women and children were among the dead and wounded in the assault in Mahmoudiya, hospital officials said. Late Monday, police said they found 12 bodies in different parts of town — possible victims of reprisal killings.

Several witnesses, including municipal council members, said the attack began when gunmen — presumed to be Sunnis — fired on the funeral of a member of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia, killing nine mourners.

Assailants then drove to the nearby market area in the town 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing three soldiers at a checkpoint and firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles at the crowd. After the gunmen sped away, they lobbed several mortar rounds into the neighborhood, the witnesses said.

The assault occurred a few hundred yards from Iraqi army and police positions, but the troops did not intervene until the attackers were fleeing, the witnesses said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals.

3 U.S. soldiers killed
The U.S. command announced that three American soldiers were killed in separate attacks Monday — two in the Baghdad area and one in Anbar province west of the capital. At least 2,554 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

There were conflicting casualty figures in the market attack, with a Shiite television station reporting more than 70 dead. But local police and Dr. Dawoud al-Taie, director of Mahmoudiya hospital, said 50 people were killed and about 90 were wounded.

In Baghdad, Shiite legislator Jalaluddin al-Saghir said Iraqi military authorities had ignored warnings that weapons were being stocked in a mosque near the market. He also said the local police commander refused to order his men to confront the attackers because they lacked weapons and ammunition.

Dozens of Shiite lawmakers, including followers of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, stormed out of a parliament session to protest the performance of the security forces.

Bloody July
In the first 17 days of July, at least 617 Iraqis have been killed in war-related violence, at least 527 civilians and 90 police and security forces, according to an AP count. In the nearly two months since the unity government took office on May 20, more than 1,850 Iraqis have been killed, including at least 1,585 civilians and 267 security forces. The figures do not include insurgents.

The July figure represents a marked increase over the same period last year when an AP count showed at least 450 Iraqis killed, at least 306 civilians and 144 police and security forces. The 617 killed so far this July is already near the total killed in all July last year: 714.

In Mahmoudiya, long a flashpoint of Shiite-Sunni tension, tempers boiled as frantic relatives milled about the hospital, scuffling with guards and Iraqi soldiers who tried to keep them outside so doctors could treat the wounded.

“You are strong men only when you face us, but you let them do what they did to us,” one man shouted at a guard.

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