Blast in Baghdad Kills One, Wounds 19

A gas tanker truck wired with explosives blew up Friday in a west Baghdad neighborhood, killing one person, wounding 19 and sending a fireball into the night sky just hours after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld left the capital.

Capt. Brian Lucas, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said no members of the U.S.-led multinational force were among the casualties.

The butane truck was parked near the Libyan Embassy in the Mansour district, an upscale neighborhood where many foreigners live and embassies are located, police said. Residents said they could hear gunshots immediately after the blast.

Most of the wounded suffered severe burns, said a doctor at Baghdad’s Yarmouk Hospital. Three nearby houses were damaged. There were no injuries in the embassies.

Rumsfeld’s surprise one-day tour took him to the cities of Mosul, Fallouja and Tikrit and to the heavily barricaded Green Zone in Baghdad. He did not visit the Mansour district.

In Fallouja, west of Baghdad, about 4,000 displaced residents returned to inspect their homes Friday, the second day that authorities have allowed some people back into the city.

Much of Fallouja has remained uninhabitable since the U.S. offensive in November that left destroyed homes, unexploded ordnance and shortages of water or other basic supplies. But bringing back the tens of thousands of people who fled before the assault is a key step in the attempt to restore stability in the city before the Jan. 30 elections.

Many of those who arrived Friday were shocked and angry. Some said they would rather remain in makeshift camps outside the town than return to their bombed out homes.

“I no longer have my home,” said a man who identified himself only as Abdul-Rahman. “I prefer the camp to returning to Fallouja in this terrible way. I don’t know when am I going to be bombed or killed.”

Iraq’s interim security minister, Kasim Daoud, said residents were insisting on returning despite clashes that have continued in the city since the offensive ended -- including heavy fighting Thursday that killed three Marines.

A posting Friday on an Islamic website made a rare admission of significant casualties, saying 24 insurgents were killed in Thursday’s clash. The statement said 19 were non-Iraqi Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Syria and Jordan and the rest were Iraqis.

The persistent violence has raised fears that voters will not be able to cast ballots in the national assembly elections. A powerful Sunni Muslim group, the Muslim Scholars Assn., renewed its calls Friday for postponing elections.

“We are not against the elections, but we want fair elections that represent the Iraqi people. Since this is not possible at the time being ... we call for postponing it,” senior cleric Sheik Ahmed Abdel Ghafour told worshipers at Baghdad’s Umm Qura mosque in his Friday sermon.

Clerics with the association have urged Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority to boycott the election to protest the offensive in Fallouja, whose population is predominantly Sunni.