Suicide car bombing kills 10, wounds scores

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide car bomber crashed a white Oldsmobile into a police station in Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim enclave Thursday, killing himself, nine others and wounding as many as 45. Earlier, gunmen -- one dressed as a Shiite cleric -- shot and killed a Spanish military attache.\nThe violence, six months to the day after Baghdad fell to American forces, underscored the predicament of a capital whose deliverance from Saddam Hussein's tyranny has been repeatedly undermined by terrorism, attacks on U.S. forces and sectarian unrest.\nThe ancient city's landscape is now lined with massive concrete blast barriers and coils of barbed wire outside hotels, government departments and along stretches of road near U.S. military bases.\nAs in previous attacks, there was no claim of responsibility for the 8:30 a.m. bombing in Sadr City, a Baghdad district with an estimated 2 million Shiites.\n"It was a huge blast and everything became dark from the debris and sand. I was thrown to the ground," said Mohammed Adnan, who sells watermelons opposite the police station.\nVegetable seller Fakhriya Jarallah said two of her sons were repairing the outside wall of the compound.\n"I ran across the road like a madwoman to find out what happened to my sons. But thanks to God they are both safe," she said.\nPolicemen and some in the crowd that gathered outside the police station after the explosion offered an assortment of possible culprits that ranged from non-Iraqi Arab militants to Saddam loyalists and Shiite radicals angry about a cleric's arrest.\nThe killing of the Spanish military attache happened across town in the upscale Mansour area about 30 minutes before the car bombing.\nJose Antonio Bernal Gomez, an air force sergeant attached to Spain's National Intelligence Center, was shot to death after four men, one dressed as a Shiite cleric, knocked on the door of his home, according to a Spanish diplomat in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity. Shiite clerics generally wear black cloaks and white headdresses; Sunnis favor lighter-colored garb.\nCommenting on Thursday's violence, L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, emphasized his government's commitment to fighting terrorism, branding the perpetrators of attacks in Iraq as individuals who have shown "wanton disregard" for the lives of innocent people.