Suicide bomb kills 25 at Iraq event
BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber blew himself up Sunday in the midst of a celebration to welcome home an Iraqi detainee released from U. S. custody, killing at least 25 people, Iraqi officials said.
The U. S. military, meanwhile, announced the arrest of a figure from al-Qaida in Iraq who allegedly planned the 2006 kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll — one of the highest-profile attacks against Westerners in Iraq.
The suicide attack occurred inside one of several tents set up outside a house in the Abu Ghraib area on Baghdad’s western outskirts, according to residents and police. It was unclear whether the former detainee was among the casualties.
A woman who was wounded but declined to give her name for security reasons said she was preparing food behind the tents when the blast occurred at about 9 p. m., knocking her and her three young children off their feet.
Residents and police said Ayyid Salim al-Zubaie, a local sheik in the mainly Sunni area, had invited dozens of guests to a banquet in honor of his son, who was released earlier in the day from Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
Residents said the detainee-son had quarreled with al-Qaida members while in detention and might have been the target of the attack.
The guests also included several members of the local awakening council, a U. S.-allied group that has turned against al-Qaida.
Yassir al-Jumaili, a doctor at the hospital in nearby Fallujah where most of the wounded were taken, gave the death toll as 25 and said that at least 29 people were wounded.
The blast was a grim reminder of the dangers still facing Iraqis despite a sharp decrease in violence after the 2007 U. S. troop buildup, a Sunni decision to join forces with the Americans against al-Qaida and a Shiite militia cease-fire.
The announcement of the arrest of Salim Abdullah Ashur al-Shujayri, also known as Abu Othman, was a major breakthrough in a series of kidnappings.
He was captured Aug. 11 in Baghdad and accused of being “the planner behind the kidnapping” of Carroll, a Christian Science Monitor reporter who was seized Jan. 7, 2006, and released three months later, according to the military.
The statement also said al- Shujayri’s associates were involved in the kidnappings of Christian peace activists and British aid worker Margaret Hassan but did not elaborate.
Hassan, 59, the director of CARE international in Iraq, was abducted in Baghdad in October 2004 and shown on a video pleading for her life, calling on then-Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain to withdraw troops from Iraq.
She was killed a month later, but her body was never found. Hassan, who was married to an Iraqi, had lived in the country for 30 years and spent nearly half her life helping Iraqis.
