56 Iraqis die in multiple car bombings Saturday

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
At least 56 Iraqis died in bombings Saturday, including one planted on a minibus that exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad. The man blamed for parking the vehicle in Kufa, a Shiite town 100 miles south of the Iraqi capital, was cornered and killed by a mob as he walked away from the explosion, police and witnesses said. The bomb killed 31 and wounded 58, said Issa Mohammed, director of the morgue in the neighboring town of Najaf. In northwest Baghdad, two parked cars exploded one after another, killing 25 civilians and wounding 65 in a mixed neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, police said. There was no indication the attacks were related to the execution of Saddam Hussein. They came on the eve of when Iraq's Shiites begin celebrating Eid al-Adha, the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, and shoppers crowded into markets to buy supplies for the four-day festival. Television footage showed hundreds of men in traditional Arab headdresses swarming around the minibus' charred frame, toppled on its side in the street. Ambulances and fire trucks pulled up to the site, and a coffin could be seen being loaded onto the top of a car.