41 killed in Iraq bombing

BAGHDAD - At least 41 people were killed when a car bomb exploded in a neighbourhood of the Iraqi capital Wednesday night, police and medics said.

They said the bomb exploded near a popular restaurant in the poor, predominantly Shia neighbourhood of Shula, on the northwest edge of Baghdad.

Medics said there was no apparent military target for the blast, which occurred when the streets were thronged with people eating out or shopping for the evening.

It was the deadliest attack in Baghdad since twin bombs killed at least 50 people in Sadr City, another Shia neighbourhood of the capital April 29.

On Monday, Iraqi military spokesman Qassim Atta showed reporters clips from the video taped confessions of a man police say is Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the shadowy ‘Emir’ of the Islamic State in Iraq, an umbrella Sunni insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The release of that video came days after al-Jazeera aired an audio tape from a man who said he was al-Baghdadi and that he was free and well.

On separate occasions in the spring of 2007, Iraqi police reported that they had killed and captured al-Baghdadi. In July 2007, the US military said it believed al-Baghdadi did not exist, but was a ‘myth’ created to ‘put an Iraqi face’ on Al Qaeda in Iraq.