10/02/2004

Up to 50 people feared dead after Iraq car bomb attack

Up to 50 people may have been killed and dozens injured after a car bomb attack in Iraq this morning, the BBC has reported.

The massive explosion occurred outside a police station in the town of Iskandariya, a town around 25 miles south of the capital Baghdad.

Initial reports from news agencies at the scene suggest that at least 20 people have been killed, but a local doctor has said that there could be many as 50 deaths.

It is not clear whether coalition forces personnel are among the dead.

Reuters has reported that the US administration believes that rebels linked to Al Qaeda will deliberately target Iraqi civilians in an attempt to engineer a sectarian civil war – so rendering the country ungovernable for the US provisional authority.

Today's outrage is the second devastating bomb attack in Iraq this month. On February 1, two suicide bombers targeted Kurdish political party offices in northern Iraq killing more than 100 people.

The bombers struck separately at the offices of US-supported Kurdish political parties in the town of Irbil. Hundreds of people were injured in the attacks which targeted Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) buildings.

(gmcg)

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