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Baghdad strike kills 55

There were grim reports tonight that a US missile strike on a busy marketplace in Baghdad had killed up to 55 people and left scores more wounded.
Osama Sakhari, a doctor at Baghdad's al-Noor Hospital, told the Reuters news agency that he had counted 55 bodies, and more than 47 wounded people.

Arabic language television station al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya also reported on the bombing, in the Shula neighbourhood of the capital. Al Jazeera television also put the death toll at 55, and showed the injured, many of them children, lying in hospital beds with bandages on theur heads and faces. One boy had a blood-soaked bandage on his nose and cried softly as a man and woman sobbed.

"An Iraqi official told us that the search is still going on for those trapped under the rubble," said the correspondent for al-Jazeera.

Earlier, Reuters reported that an air strike on a Baghdad neighbourhood office of the ruling Ba'ath party had killed eight people, including several civilians.

Residents of the capital's Mansour district told Reuters that the strike took place at around noon local time, destroying several houses as well as the party offices. Witnesses said that the bodies of several civilians, along with those of Ba'ath party militia members, were pulled from the rubble.

The Iraqi capital suffered one of its heaviest nights of bombing last night.

A US stealth bomber dropped two huge "bunker-busting" bombs on a communications tower. The US military said that Iraqi command centres were also targeted.

The bombing of Baghdad resumed shortly before 0900 GMT (12pm local time), when one explosion was heard in the city centre and several others in the outskirts, where many of the regime's elite troops are believed to be stationed.

Although Iraqi officials admitted that the capital would probably be encircled within five to 10 days, they remained defiant. "The enemy must come inside Baghdad, and that will be its grave," the Iraqi defence minister, General Sultan Hashim Ahmed, said.

This morning, Iraqi officials took journalists in Baghdad to see what they claimed was a downed US drone aircraft. Britain destroyed 14 tanks breaking out of Basra yesterday.
 
 

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