Iraqi official: 52 killed in Baghdad airstrike
 |
Iraqis look at the crater left by a bomb that landed Friday in a west Baghdad market.
Story Tools
SPECIAL REPORT
|
|
VIDEO
|
Headlines from Arab newspapers about coalition bombings.
|
|
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An Iraqi hospital official said at least 52 people were killed and more than 50 others were wounded when a Baghdad neighborhood was struck Friday in a coalition airstrike.
Dr. Hakki Ismail Marzooki, general manager of Al Noor Hospital, said that around 6 p.m. a coalition air attack hit Al Shula, a busy neighborhood and marketplace.
He said the area has no military targets and that old people and children were among the dead and injured. The neighborhood is only 200 meters from the hospital.
He said the neighborhood was filled with "just civilians buying things," and described the incident as "an ugly massacre that resulted in a large number of innocents killed and wounded."
Iraqi Information Minister Mohamed Saeed al-Sahaf condemned the strike as a "cowardly crime" on the part of the coalition and said it was in response to Iraqi military successes in the south.
In Doha, Qatar, a spokesman for the coalition U.S. Central Command said, "We cannot confirm that report."
CNN could not independently confirm the report or the casualty numbers.
