Suicide attacks on govt compound in Baghdad

BAGHDAD – Three suicide bombers attacked an entrance to Baghdad’s Green Zone government compound yesterday but medical staff said only two bystanders were killed.

One bomb failed to go off and the attacker was arrested, an Interior Ministry source and a US military spokesman said. Police said the attack involved a car bomb followed up by two bombers on foot, targeting a checkpoint guarded by Iraqi troops and police and used by civilian employees, journalists and others arriving for work at the fortified complex.Doctors at the city’s Yarmouk hospital said they had seen two bodies from the attack and were treating five people for wounds.Earlier staff there said 13 people in all were hurt.”We felt a strong blast.I came out and saw a car blown up,” policeman Haider Abdel Hussein told Reuters Television.Another policeman at the scene said the first, vehicle, bomb was in a police car.As the explosion shook central Baghdad a second bomber with explosives strapped to his body rushed in and detonated among people rushing to help the wounded.After this, an Interior Ministry source said, police noticed one wounded man had wires hanging out of his clothing and detained him, suspecting a third bomber may have been thwarted.”A second suicide bomber (on foot) was stopped before he was able to detonate the device,” a US military spokesman said.Suicide bombers from the Sunni Arab insurgency have been resorting to such multiple attacks to help press their campaign against US occupation and the new Shi’ite-led government.The suicide explosions were followed by a mortar attack on the Green Zone, which formerly housed Saddam Hussein’s main palaces, police said.Reuters correspondents in Baghdad also heard heavy machinegun fire from the same area after the blasts.The blasts came on a new July 14 public holiday, announced last month and marking the 1958 revolution that overthrew the British-installed monarchy and gave Iraq its first taste of real independence from foreign domination.- Nampa-ReutersPolice said the attack involved a car bomb followed up by two bombers on foot, targeting a checkpoint guarded by Iraqi troops and police and used by civilian employees, journalists and others arriving for work at the fortified complex.Doctors at the city’s Yarmouk hospital said they had seen two bodies from the attack and were treating five people for wounds.Earlier staff there said 13 people in all were hurt.”We felt a strong blast.I came out and saw a car blown up,” policeman Haider Abdel Hussein told Reuters Television.Another policeman at the scene said the first, vehicle, bomb was in a police car.As the explosion shook central Baghdad a second bomber with explosives strapped to his body rushed in and detonated among people rushing to help the wounded.After this, an Interior Ministry source said, police noticed one wounded man had wires hanging out of his clothing and detained him, suspecting a third bomber may have been thwarted.”A second suicide bomber (on foot) was stopped before he was able to detonate the device,” a US military spokesman said.Suicide bombers from the Sunni Arab insurgency have been resorting to such multiple attacks to help press their campaign against US occupation and the new Shi’ite-led government.The suicide explosions were followed by a mortar attack on the Green Zone, which formerly housed Saddam Hussein’s main palaces, police said.Reuters correspondents in Baghdad also heard heavy machinegun fire from the same area after the blasts.The blasts came on a new July 14 public holiday, announced last month and marking the 1958 revolution that overthrew the British-installed monarchy and gave Iraq its first taste of real independence from foreign domination.- Nampa-Reuters