NEWS ALERT: CAR BOMB KILLS 34 IN SHIITE AREA OF BAGHDAD

Car Bomb Goes Off By Ice Cream Parlor

By Nada Bakri

Washington Post Foreign ServiceThursday, May 21, 2009

http://tinyurl.com/q3x6f6

BAGHDAD, May 20 -- A car bomb exploded Wednesday near a crowded ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of northern Baghdad, killing at least 34 people and wounding 72 in one of the deadliest attacks in weeks.

Iraqi security forces cordoned off the bombing site as ambulances, their sirens wailing, ferried the dead and wounded to nearby hospitals. Witnesses said people ran frantically from the scene, terrified that another bombing might follow.

"These are desperate attempts to divide the Iraqi people," said Hamdallah Ali Rikabi, a neighborhood official in a movement loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric whose followers once controlled the area. "But they have learned from their past."

A series of suicide bombings struck predominantly Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad last month, making April the most violent month this year and fueling speculation that Sunni insurgents might be trying to instigate the sort of sectarian conflict that plunged Iraq into chaos in 2006 and 2007.

Civilian casualties have mounted each month this year, as the United States prepares to withdraw combat troops from cities by June 30.

But for days this month, amid a lull in the bombings, Baghdad's most formidable problems had seemed to be traffic sometimes snarled for a mile before omnipresent checkpoints and the heat of an early summer.