• Text size  | | |
• Email this document
• Printable version

At least 28 dead in Baghdad mosque attack

Last updated (GMT/UTC): 29.08.2011 07:11

Security personnel inspect the site of a bomb attack inside the Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad.

At least 28 people are dead, including an Iraqi lawmaker, and dozens more wounded in a suicide bomb attack on Baghdad's largest Sunni mosque.

Officials say the bomber blew himself inside the Um al-Qura mosque during Prayers on August 28.

Parliamentarian Khalid al-Fahdawi was among those killed.

No one has claimed responsibility yet for the suicide bombing.

Ahmed Adbul Ghafour al-Samarrai, who heads an organization which runs Sunni religious sites in Iraq, told local television that the bomber had been waiting for him. He was slightly wounded in the attack.

It was the worst violence to hit Iraq since August 15 when a series of car bombs and suicide attacks killed at least 70 people across the country.

Officials blamed local Iraqi Al-Qaeda affiliates for those attacks.

The suicide bombing comes as the outgoing UN's top diplomat in Iraq, Ad Melkert, said Baghdad needed to decide soon whether its security forces are capable of handling the task before U.S. forces withdraw from the country at the end of the year as now planned.

The White House has offered to keep up to 10,000 combat troops in Iraq. Baghdad is not expected to decide whether to ask the troops to stay for several weeks at least.

About 46,000 U.S. troops are now in Iraq.

compiled from agency reports

Link to original story on RFE/RL website

Topics: Sunni, Sunni, Terrorism,