Word: blasts
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...first the Ayatullah's fate was unclear. The blast occurred moments after the Friday morning prayers, and most of those outside believed he had not yet left the shrine to Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, in the heart of Najaf. Assuming that al-Hakim was still inside, many had thought he would have been protected from the explosion by the shrine's massive western wall and its huge door, the Bab-e-Kibbleh, which remained standing. But when the bomb went off, the 64-year-old cleric was outside the shrine and about to get into...
...crater in the black-tar road marked the spot where the bomb exploded. Within 30 ft. were the twisted carcasses of at least seven cars--alHakim's white Toyota Land Cruiser among them--most mangled beyond recognition and still ablaze. In the market across from the shrine, the blast reduced several shops to mounds of rubble. Street vendors' stalls that had been laden with dried fruits and nuts were incinerated, their contents sprayed across the area. The few people who ran toward the bomb site were showered by a hail of pistachios and almonds...
...supporters suspect that al-Sadr was behind an attempt on Aug. 24 to assassinate al-Hakim's uncle Mohammed Said al-Hakim. A bomb exploded outside al-Hakim's home, injuring him and killing three. Al-Sadr has denied any involvement in that attack. Moments before last week's blast, al-Sadr was across town at the grand mosque of Kufa, delivering a sermon in which he condemned the attack on the older Hakim. "It was the act of criminals and should be punished," al-Sadr said...
...witnesses said more than a dozen cars had been destroyed. Tariq Juwaid, a former police staff sargent who had lined up near the car park with other ex-cops seeking readmission into the force, saw over a dozen policemen lying bleeding on the ground immediately after the blast. "Many of them were lying in pools of blood," he says. Razak Saleh, another ex-cop, says he tried to help two of the injured but they were motionless: "I'm no doctor, but I can tell when a man is dead, and those two had already gone to Allah...
...blast was smaller than the explosions at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf last week and at the United Nations HQ the week before, but it was no less audacious in its choice of target. And it will likely have a greater impact than those blasts on the psyche of ordinary Iraqis. "If the police headquarters can be bombed," says Hani Humaileh Obaid, who had come to the compound for identity papers confiscated by the cops, "then no place is safe for Iraqis...