ZZAAFARANIYA, Iraq - As many as 40 Iraqi civilians were killed and many badly wounded in a series of huge blasts at an arms dump on the outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday, an Iraqi medic told Reuters near the scene. US troops blamed unidentified attackers who fired flares into the munitions store. But local people turned their anger on the Americans, shooting and forcing them back, soldiers said.
Some soldiers were wounded, an Army sergeant-major told Reuters at Zaafaraniya, a mixed residential and industrial suburb on the southern edge of the capital.
Earlier, Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis had seen furious local people throw stones at American troops.
A series of loud explosions, lasting about an hour, were heard in the city centre from about 8 a.m. (0400 GMT). US troops said they were caused by controlled detonations to destroy Iraqi munitions as part of a continuing programme.
But later at the scene, an officer told Reuters assailants hads sparked the chain reaction by firing flares into the dump.
A local medic travelling in an Iraqi civilian ambulance ferrying casualties between the blast scene and a hospital said there had been many victims.
Asked how many were killed, he replied: Forty.
Local people said several people were believed to be still trapped in the rubble of a wrecked building, apparently hit by an errant surface-to-surface missile from the arms storage dump.
A man who was hurt told Reuters that five people, four women and a child, were killed in the house next door to him in the Zaafaraniya suburb, on the southern edge of the capital.
I woke up and went to have breakfast, the injured man, who gave his name only as Mohammed.
There was a huge explosion next to our house. Fires started all around. Explosions ripped through the neighbourhood. In the next house, four women and a child were burned to death.
It is a big mess.
FURY AND DESPERATION
An enraged man at the scene vented his fury at the US forces who took the capital two weeks ago: Why, why?...The war is finished. A baby, a woman, 14 under this building, he screamed in English.
May God exact his revenge, added a woman, whose head was bandaged. She was seated next to a young girl whose dress was soaked in blood from a head injury. The girls leg was being bandaged by a soldier.
Whatever the precise cause, the incident seemed likely to hamper US efforts to win Iraqis support for their presence, however pleased most people are to be rid of Saddam Hussein.
US Army Captain Patrick Sullivan, from an engineering unit, said the chain of blasts was sparked by unknown attackers.
Hostile forces fired four flares into an ammunition storage area. One of the flares ignited an explosion and that set off a chain of explosions, Sullivan told Reuters at the scene.
Later US Army Sergeant-Major Gary Coker told Reuters at a point some three km (two miles) from the scene that his unit had been forced to pull back because they had been fired on.
We tried to go and help them. The people came out and shot at my men, he said, adding that the soldiers did not return fire and that some of them had been hurt.
Desperate neighbours shaken from their beds or interrupted having breakfast dug frantically in the rubble of homes, looking for survivors amid the mud and shattered concrete.
Reuters photographer Behrakis saw a number of people bleeding heavily and one man, blackened and burned, being treated by US Army medics. He added that witnesses said some of the victims had their limbs severed or had been badly burned.
The Americans sent troops to help the wounded but they were met by angry crowds throwing stones, Behrakis said.
Sullivan said one US soldier was also slightly hurt in the blasts. US troops blocked the road leading to the dump.
US forces have destroyed large quantities of Iraqi munitions since taking the capital city on April 9.
Just like during the war.
Good thing there's no snow on the ground in Baghdad.