Baghdad: A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car near a funeral procession in southeastern Baghdad today, killing at least 32 people half of them policemen who were guarding the march in the latest brazen attack since the US troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Police officials said the blast occurred at 11:00 am in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah, where mourners had gathered for the funeral of a person killed the day before. They said 65 people were wounded in the attack, including 16 policemen.
Hospital officials confirmed the death toll. Salam Hussein, a 42-year-old grocery store owner in Zafaraniyah said he was watching the funeral procession, which was heavily guarded by police, when the blast blew out his store windows and injured one of his workers.
"It was a huge explosion," Hussein said. As he took his worker to the hospital, Hussein said he saw cars engulfed in flames, "human flesh scattered around and several mutilated bodies in a pool of blood" around where the attacker's car had exploded.
Zafaraniyah resident Talib Bashir, 50, said he was part of the procession of about 500 men but left the group to take his child home when he heard the blast. "I saw smoke coming from a parked car that had exploded," Bashir said, adding that police and civilians cars, an ambulance van and several stores were engulfed in flames hours after the blast.
"The fire lasted for a long time," Bashir said. Minutes after the blast, gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint in Zafaraniyah, killing two policemen, according to police officials. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
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