Baghdad, December 17
A bomb by a fuel truck set off a huge fireball in which at least 17 persons were killed in Baghdad today, as violence gripped Iraq in the wake of the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Thousands of US troops swooped on a heavily anti-American town north of Baghdad to flush out insurgents as President George W. Bush said Saddam, held by US forces at an undisclosed location, deserved to die.
Shortly after dawn, the bomb in Bayya’a district of Baghdad caused a huge ball of fire that caught a minibus and several civilian cars packed with people heading to work, the police said.
At least 17 persons, mostly passengers, were killed and around 16 others badly burnt in the inferno, they said.
It was not immediately clear whether the bomb had been in the truck itself, or whether it had gone off at the roadside causing the truck carrying fuel to explode.
Roadside bombs are a favourite weapon of anti-American guerrillas who use them to attack US military patrols. Civilians are also caught up in such attacks.
The violence was another blow to any hopes that the capture of Saddam last Saturday near his hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, would ease guerrilla attacks.
In a continued crackdown on guerrillas, American troops raided a house in the town of Samarra and captured 73 suspected insurgents yesterday, including the leader of a guerrilla cell, the US Army said.
It said early today that the offensive was stepped up overnight to isolate and eliminate former members of Saddam’s regime and other cells fighting the US-led coalition and seeking to destabilise Iraq.
The US 4th Infantry Division, based in Tikrit, was running Operation Ivy Blizzard in Samarra, along with Iraqi security forces, the army said.
Two army brigades ringed the town, cutting it off from the outside world while soldiers of a third brigade made house-to-house searches. They also scoured workshops and junk yards at the industrial sector of town.
At times they used hammers and demolition charges to open doors at shops or homes.
Five persons were arrested on Wednesday and a small amount of weapons were seized.
In Washington, Mr Bush said in an ABC News interview yesterday that Saddam deserved the ‘‘ultimate penalty’’ for his iron-fisted rule of Iraq and that Iraqis should conduct the trial.
‘‘Let’s just see what penalty he gets, but I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty (death)...for what he has done to his people,’’ Mr Bush said. officials have said any trial is still some way off.
— Reuters
