Iraq Schoolyard Blast Kills Boy, Hurts 4 Others

Iraq’s continuing violence took an alarming turn Monday when a hand grenade or some other explosive device went off in a schoolyard among children at play, killing a 7-year-old boy and wounding four others.

U.S. military officials said they found and defused a second explosive device in the playground. It was unclear who might have targeted the poor Shiite Muslim neighborhood.

Some witnesses reported seeing a hand grenade thrown over the schoolyard wall, said Aladdin Alwan, Iraq’s education minister. He blamed insurgents determined to derail the nation’s reconstruction.

“It’s terrorists attempting to disrupt school,” he said after visiting some of the wounded children at a Baghdad hospital. “It was an attack by people who don’t want to see school reopened.”

Separately, three U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in roadside bombings in Baghdad, the northern city of Tall Afar and the town of Baqubah, bringing U.S. military deaths since the war began in March to 541. And U.S. officials reported that on Saturday gunmen ambushed a taxi carrying Americans from a religious group on a highway between Baghdad and the ancient city of Babylon, killing one and injuring three.

The attacks come amid growing concern about whether this country is stable enough for the U.S. to hand over authority this summer to the Iraqi people.

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Firyal Salman Hamid, principal of Asma Elementary School in central Baghdad, said of the blast at the school.

The 2 p.m. attack came as scores of children were playing outside during recess. Some witnesses said a small group of children were burning a pile of trash near a wall and may have inadvertently set off an explosive device buried in the debris.

Hours after the blast, a child’s torn black shoe lay atop blood-soaked sand, and shrapnel had pockmarked the schoolyard wall.

“All the children started running and screaming,” said Bara Kassim, 22, a shopkeeper who jumped over the school wall and tried to assist some of the bleeding children.

Mustafa Mohammed Saleh, a first-grader who liked playing soccer and marbles, died at the scene, said his uncle, Karim Jamel Sumeili. The family lives one block from the school.

“We all ran over when we heard the explosion, fearing for our children,” Sumeili said. “We can’t point fingers yet. But all this is the responsibility of the Americans. They said they would give us security, but all they have given us is horror and fear.”

The ambush of the American church group occurred Saturday near the town of Mahmudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. The Rev. John Kelley, 48, of Rhode Island was killed and three Baptist ministers -- from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York -- were wounded, a Kelley family spokesman told Associated Press.

Monday’s roadside bombings left three soldiers dead. A member of Task Force Iron Horse was killed and four others were wounded in Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. In Baghdad, a member of the 1st Armored Division was killed and another injured. And in Tall Afar, about 30 miles northwest of Mosul, a Task Force Olympia soldier was killed and another hurt.