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Two Bombs Hit Near Baghdad's Green Zone


14 July 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Two suicide bombers struck a busy checkpoint at the main entrance to Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone today, killing at least one person and injuring a number of others.

Reports say rescuers had just begun removing bodies and casualties from the first attack when a second attacker wearing an explosives belt approached and blew himself up.

"We felt a strong blast. I came out and saw a blown-up car and some people dead on the street," police officer Haider Abdel Hussein told Reuters.

Yesterday, some 30 people were killed, most of them children, when a suicide car bomber blew himself up next to U.S. troops handing out candy in a poor district of the capital.

Chief UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said there can be no justification for the deliberate targeting of civilians, especially children.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the insurgents have no regard for innocent human life.

The new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has warned that foreign terrorists and insurgents linked to the Ba'ath Party of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein are trying to foment a civil war in Iraq.

(compiled from agency reports)

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