Rescuers rush to the scene of one of three car bomb explosions in the southern Iraq city of Basra April 21, 2004. Dozens of people were killed when car bombs hit three police stations in the southern city of Basra, a Reuters reporter said. (Atef Hassan/Reuters)
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BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Suicide bombers killed at least 68 people, 17 of them children incinerated in minibuses taking them to school, in coordinated strikes on police stations in Iraq (news - web sites)'s southern city of Basra on Wednesday.
President Bush (news - web sites) and Basra Mayor Wael Abdul-Hafeez accused Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network of being behind the morning rush-hour blasts that shattered months of relative calm in Basra, a stronghold of Iraq's Shi'ite majority.
"They just blew up innocent Iraqis," Bush told reporters in Washington after the almost simultaneous car bombs hit three police stations in Basra and two more struck a police academy in Zubair, a mainly Sunni town 15 miles further south.
At least three Iraqis were killed in Zubair and three British soldiers were wounded.
"All four attacks seem to have been carried out by suicide bombers," said a British military spokeswoman in Basra, which is in Britain's sector of responsibility in Iraq.
Iraqi officials said 68 people, not counting the bombers, were killed and 99 wounded. British officials said about 10 policemen were among the dead.
A wounded Iraqi, Amin Dinar, said he had heard a huge explosion as he stood at the door of his house.
"I looked around and saw my leg bleeding and my neighbor lying dead on the floor, torn apart," he said from his hospital bed. "I saw a minibus full of children on fire."
