Car bomb at Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad kills 10
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-22 22:13

A car bomb blew up outside a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad as prayers were ending on Friday, killing 10 people and wounding 15, Iraqi police said.

The explosion occurred outside the al-Subeih mosque in the eastern New Baghdad district of the capital.

"I was rushing to the mosque in my car for Friday prayers when I heard a big blast," a witness told Reuters Television.

"I ran inside and started carrying the bodies of those who were killed. My clothes were covered in blood."

A wall of the building appeared to have been knocked down by the power of the blast and a water cistern inside the mosque burst, soaking the floor. Blood mixed with the water forming large red pools, Reuters Television pictures showed.

Rescuers carried the bodies away in wheelbarrows and collected the rubble and debris with spades. A passenger bus parked outside the building was destroyed, although no one was in it at the time of the explosion.

It was the latest in a series of explosions outside both Shi'ite and Sunni mosques in Iraq over the past year, amid tensions between the country's two main religious denominations.

Ties have grown strained in the wake of an election in January that brought the once persecuted Shi'ite majority to power, at the expense of the Sunni minority that once dominated.

As well as attacks on mosques, insurgents have also bombed Christian churches in an effort to scare away Iraq's small Christian community, which makes up about 3 percent of the population.

The US military said on Friday that a suicide car bombing on Wednesday at an Iraqi police checkpoint killed three people and wounded three.

The car, laden with estimated 120 kg (250 pounds) of explosives, blew up at checkpoint in north-central Baghdad, the US military said in a statement.

Two Interior Ministry employees and a police officer were killed, it said. One police officer and two civilians were wounded.

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