'Saddamist' gunmen kill 50 civilians at busy market

A destroyed market remains empty after being raided by armed gunmen in Mahmoudiya, just south of Baghdad
A destroyed market remains empty after being raided by armed gunmen in Mahmoudiya, just south of Baghdad. Photograph: Haider Fateh/AP
Gunmen yesterday killed more than 50 people and wounded dozens more in an attack near a crowded market in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in one of the most violent incidents in Iraq in recent months.

Local officials and residents, and US troops who arrived later at the scene, said a large number of men stormed the market in the religiously mixed town after a barrage of mortar shells and grenades.

Armed gunmen opened fire on civilians with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, police captain Rashid al-Samaraie told Associated Press.

The local hospital reported 56 dead and 67 wounded. Shops, homes and cars were left ablaze, residents said.

President Jalal Talabani called on both Sunni and Shia Muslim clerics to condemn the violence, which he said was aimed at destabilising the country and creating "a climate of mistrust".

The identity of the attackers was unclear. But the head of Mahmudiya council said they were Sunni rebels who had attacked a Shia family in the suburb before moving across the town. "It was a well-planned Saddamist plot," council chief Abu Ali al-Masoudi told Iraqiya television. "They burned shops and the market and killed people who were eating their breakfast in restaurants and cafes and people going to work."

Six Americans have been charged over the alleged rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Mahmudiya in March and the killing of her parents and sister. Three US soldiers from the same unit were killed nearby in an attack ast month.

In Basra, it was confirmed that Sajad Abu Aya, a key member of the Shia Mahdi army, had been captured in an operation on Sunday in which a British soldier was killed. "We got the man we wanted," British military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge told Reuters.

The British soldier was named yesterday as Corporal John Johnston Corby, of the 1st Battalion the Devonshire and Dorset Light Infantry. Cpl Cosby was 28 and was born in Belfast before his family moved to the west of England.

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