Monday, February 26, 2007
Female suicide bomber kills 41 at university
Security
(AP) Meanwhile Sunday, a female suicide bomber triggered a ball bearing-packed charge, killing at least 41 people at a mostly Shiite college whose main gate was left littered with blood-soaked student notebooks and papers amid the bodies. Witnesses said a woman carried out the attack at the business school annex to Mustansiriyah University. Interior Ministry officials said they were still investigating those reports.
Besides the college blast, at least 18 people were killed, mostly in Shiite districts, in bombings and rocket attacks in the Baghdad area. Security guards at the Mustansiriyah University annex scuffled with the bomber before the blast, witnesses said. Most of the victims were students, including at least 46 injured, said police. Suicide bombings by women are unusual but not unprecedented in Iraq's chaos. The main campus at Mustansiriyah, about 1 1/2 miles away, was the target of twin car bombs and a suicide blast last month that killed 70 people. The school is located in a mostly Shiite district of northeast Baghdad, but does not limit enrollment to that group.
OTHER VIOLENCE
In the northern city of Mosul, U.S. troops killed two gunmen in a raid and captured a suspected local leader of the insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq, the military said. Additional details were not immediately available. Iraq's Interior Ministry, meanwhile, raised the toll from a suicide truck bombing in the violence-wracked Anbar province on Saturday to 52 dead and 74 injured. The attack on worshippers leaving a mosque in Habbaniyah, about 50 miles west of Baghdad, was believed linked to escalating internal Sunni battles between insurgents and those who oppose them.
In the northern city of Mosul, U.S. troops killed two gunmen in a raid and captured a suspected local leader of the insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq, the military said. Additional details were not immediately available. Iraq's Interior Ministry, meanwhile, raised the toll from a suicide truck bombing in the violence-wracked Anbar province on Saturday to 52 dead and 74 injured. The attack on worshippers leaving a mosque in Habbaniyah, about 50 miles west of Baghdad, was believed linked to escalating internal Sunni battles between insurgents and those who oppose them.
Labels: female suicide bomber, Habbaniyah, Mosul, Mustansiriyah University
