School mortar attack, bombs kill 18 in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Jan 28 (Reuters) Five girls were killed in a mortar strike on a school in a predominantly Sunni Arab district in western Baghdad today and five people including women and a child were killed by a bomb on a minibus in a Shi'ite area.

The victims were among 18 people killed by bombs and mortars in the city today, while at least six more were shot dead.

A pupil aged around 15 named Ban Ismet told Reuters at Nuaaman Hospital that she was in the yard when the blasts hit and she was wounded in the legs: ''I couldn't see much but what I saw was my friend Maha who was lying beside me on the ground.

''The shrapnel hit her in the eyes and there was blood all over her face ... She was dead.'' Police confirmed the attack, one of many tit-for-tat mortar strikes in Sunni and Shi'ite areas of the capital every day.

School principal Fawziya Swadi said two mortars landed in the schoolyard in Adil district in western Baghdad. Many pupils were gathered in the playground when the blasts blew out classroom windows, spraying pupils with glass shards that accounted for some injuries. She said 20 people were wounded.

The latest bloodshed came as the government prepares to launch a security crackdown aimed at stemming sectarian violence that kills hundreds of people every week in bombings, mortar attacks and death squad murders.

A bomb inside a minibus killed five people, including two women and a child, and wounded 35 others near a crowded market in Sadr City district in eastern Baghdad, police said.

Sadr City is a stronghold of the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the area has been hit by a number of major car bombings in recent months.

The Mehdi Army has been identified by Washington as the greatest threat to security in Iraq because of accusations it operates death squads responsible for torturing and killing dozens of people whose bodies turn up every day around Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, has pledged to crack down on Shi'ite militias linked to his political allies with as much determination as he has taken in dealing with Sunni Arab insurgents, blamed for many blasts.

But the recent surge in bomb attacks, many in largely Shi'ite areas, may raise pressure from his allies to focus on those responsible -- Maliki has blamed Sunni insurgents and militants loyal to former President Saddam Hussein whose execution at the end of December fuelled sectarian tension.

In other attacks today, a bomb on a minibus killed one person and wounded five others in the Shi'ite district of Habibiya in eastern Baghdad, police said, and a roadside bomb in another Shi'ite area, Bayaa, killed five and wounded 20.

A car bomb killed two more in the mixed Qahira district in the north of the city. The blast near al-Nidaa Sunni mosque also wounded four others.

Six more people, including the director general of Iraq's Industry Ministry, were shot dead by gunmen.

REUTERS DKA PM1809