Insurgents kill nine more in Iraq bombing
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-30 19:45

On Thursday, three suicide attackers exploded near-simultaneous car bombs in the heart of the bustling, mainly Shiite town of Balad, 50 miles north of the capital, killing at least 99 people and wounding 124, police and hospital officials said.

Apparently aimed at killing a large number of Shiite civilians, the string of bombings started just before sunset Thursday when the first blast ripped through an open-air market crowded with Iraqis buying vegetables. The next bomb exploded at a bank just yards away, followed by a third on a nearby street of clothing shops.

Most of the fatalities were civilians, though the wounded included the police chief and four officers, said Dr. Qassim Hatam, the director of Balad hospital.

New information about the Balad attack emerged Friday, when police said the insurgents had hit a police checkpoint in the city with six mortar rounds at the same time, killing one civilian. U.S. soldiers based there returned the fire and detained an Iraqi suspect from a nearby home after finding traces of explosives on his body, the military said.

Insurgents in Iraq often have attacked forces and civilians racing to the scene of suicide car bomb explosions with mortar or machine gun fire.

Also Thursday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of five U.S. soldiers a day earlier in a roadside bombing during combat in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, a hotbed of Iraq's insurgency.

It was the deadliest single attack against American troops in more than a month, bringing to 1,934 the number of U.S. service members who have died since Iraq's war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Until Thursday, however, Balad, the site of a major U.S. military air base, had seen few major attacks.

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