Bomber attacks soccer revelers
BAGHDAD – Two suicide car bombs ripped through throngs that poured into Baghdad streets carrying the Iraqi flag Wednesday in a rare moment of shared joy over the national soccer team’s surprise run to reach its first Asian Cup final. Police said at least 50 people were killed and 135 were injured.
The savagery of the attacks shocked even Baghdad’s battle-hardened residents.
“These criminals don’t want Iraqis to be happy,” said Qais Mula, a grocery store owner who said several of his regular customers were killed in one of the blasts. “The flags fell with the dead bodies in a pool of blood.”
In another reminder of the divisions that bedevil Iraq, the largest Sunni Arab bloc suspended its participation in the Shiite Muslim-led government, complaining its members had been sidelined.
A love of soccer is one of the few things that unites Iraqis from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Shops closed early, streets emptied, and violence dropped to unusually low levels as Iraqis sat transfixed through the nail-biting Asia Cup semifinal match against South Korea, broadcast live on Iraqi television and radio from Malaysia.
At a coffee shop in Baghdad’s upscale Jadriya neighborhood, men and children clustered around a small TV set, rising to their feet to shout or curse every time one of the teams came close to scoring.
“This winning spree will help us get rid of this sectarian sedition, which has afflicted the country for the last four years,” said Saad Abdul-Hussein, a Shiite security guard who was part of the group. “You can see how unified we are here in the coffee shop. There are Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians, all sitting together.”
Throughout the country, people have rallied behind the squad, whose mixed makeup has shown Iraqis that they can still come together after years of sectarian bloodshed.
“Soccer is one of the greatest gifts that the Iraqis have, and this team is a national treasure,” said Akram Khafaji, the cafe’s owner.
After their team won, 4-3, on penalties, thousands streamed onto streets all over Iraq, leaping on top of vehicles, dancing, spraying each other with party foam and pointing guns skyward in celebration. At least one person was killed and 17 were injured by celebratory gunfire, police said.
Less than two hours after the game, a bomber drove an explosives-laden car into the crowd celebrating outside a popular ice cream shop in Baghdad’s Sunni-dominated western Mansour neighborhood, killing at least 30 people and injuring 75, police said.
Another bomber detonated a payload among revelers celebrating with soldiers from an Iraqi army checkpoint in Ghadeer, a Christian enclave in east Baghdad, killing 20 people and injuring 60, police said.
Earlier Wednesday, leaders of the Sunni bloc known as the Iraqi Accordance Front said they were giving Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a week to meet their list of demands, or else they would quit his Cabinet for good.
The Accordance Front’s five ministers and Deputy Prime Minister Salam Zikam Ali Zubaie already had been boycotting Cabinet meetings, but they now planned to stop coming to their offices, said Adnan Dulaimi, who heads the bloc.
The move comes at a delicate time for al-Maliki’s government, which is under enormous pressure to show progress on legislation aimed at reconciling Iraq’s factions before U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the top U.S. commander here, Gen. David H. Petraeus, report to the U.S. Congress in September.