Enraged Sunnis Blame Al-Qaida

[ECH1969]

The residents of Ramadi had had enough. As they frantically searched the city's hospital for relatives killed and wounded in bomb blasts at a police recruiting station Thursday, they did something they had never publicly done: They blamed al-Qaida in Iraq, the insurgent movement led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"Neither the Americans nor the Shiites have any benefit in doing this. It is Zarqawi," said Khalid Saadi, 42, who came to the hospital looking for his brother, Muhammed. Saadi said he hoped that sympathies in the city, considered a hotbed of support for the Sunni Arab insurgency, would turn against al-Zarqawi's faction.

Saadi later learned that his brother was one of at least 130 people killed in attacks Thursday in Iraq, most occurring within an hour's time. The violence, which included a suicide bombing in Karbala, contributed to one of the bloodiest days since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003.

At least 56 Sunni Arabs were killed and 60 wounded at the recruiting center in Ramadi, the capital of the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar, when a bomber standing among some 1,000 police recruits struck near the Ramadi Glass and Ceramics Works, said Mohammed al-Ani, a doctor at the city's hospital.

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