Car bomb in Kufa kills 53, injures 105

updated 8:22 p.m. ET July 18, 2006

KUFA, Iraq - A suicide car bomber struck amid a crowd of laborers across from a major Shiite shrine in southern Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 53 people and wounding 105, officials and witnesses said as the United Nations reported that nearly 6,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in May and June alone.

In this town 100 miles south of Baghdad, the suicide attacker drove a minivan to a site where Shiite laborers gather to look for employment. He offered work, loaded the minivan with those who accepted and then detonated the vehicle, Najaf Gov. Asaad Abu Kalal told a Shiite television station.

The blast occurred about 7:30 a.m. across the street from Kufa’s gold-domed mosque, police Capt. Nafie Mohammed said. The shrine, located in a congested area of the city, marks the place where Imam Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, was mortally wounded.

Senior provincial health official Dr. Muthir al-Ithari said the casualty figure was from reports sent by hospitals in Kufa and nearby Najaf.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, condemned the attack and promised to track down and punish those who planned it.

Kufa is a stronghold of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose movement controls the mosque. It appeared the blast was aimed at undermining al-Sadr’s position in Iraq’s sectarian struggle, much of which has been blamed on al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

Violence in Kufa followed Monday's attack in a market in Mahmoudiya, 75 miles north. Gunmen Monday killed at least 50 people, mostly Shiites, in an apparent attack on mourners at a funeral for one of al-Sadr’s militiamen.

Fears of civil war
Late Monday, police said they found 12 bodies in different parts of town — possible victims of reprisal killings.

Many Iraqis fear the retaliatory killings are the prelude to civil war. The campaign of intimidation and attacks is slowly transforming Baghdad into sectarian zones under the tacit control of armed groups that protect members of their sect.

The country’s largest Sunni Arab party called Tuesday for a conference of all religious and political leaders to end sectarian killing and save the country from sliding into civil war.

“There is a horrible escalation of violence and reaction to violence in Iraq,” the party said. “The Iraqi Islamic Party denounces the massacres that took place in Mahmoudiya and in Kufa and appeals to Iraqis to come to their senses instead of slipping into the abyss.”

The U.S. command said three American soldiers were killed in separate attacks on 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.

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