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Suicide blasts outside Baghdad's Green Zone
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-14 15:53
Two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday near a checkpoint outside Iraq's heavily fortified Green Zone housing Iraqi officials and diplomats and police said there were casualties.
"We felt a strong blast. I came out and saw a blown up car and some people dead on the street," policeman Haider Abdel Hussein told Reuters Television.
Another policeman at the scene said one of the suicide bombers used a police car in the attack outside a checkpoint used by journalists, contractors and other civilians working in the compound.
Police sources said the second suicide bomber strapped with explosives attacked police who rushed to the scene.
An Interior Ministry source said police noticed a wounded man also had wires hanging out of his clothing, suggesting a third bomber may have been thwarted.
Suicide bombers from the Sunni Arab insurgency have been resorting to such double attacks to help press their campaign to topple Iraq's U.S.-backed, Shi'ite-led government.
The blasts came on a new public holiday, announced last month and marking the 1958 revolution that overthrew the British-installed monarchy.
The explosions were followed by a mortar attack, police said. Reuters correspondents in central Baghdad also heard heavy machinegun fire from the same area after the blasts.
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