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Some of the Iraqi Civilians wounded in the explosion
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BAGHDAD,
April 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A huge dump of
weapons at a former Iraqi army base controlled by the U.S.-led forces
in south Baghdad exploded Saturday, April 26, with some reports saying
it claimed the lives of about 40 Iraqi civilians.
The
flare triggered off a series of loud explosions and sent one errant
missile into a Baghdad home, burying its residents under rubble.
CNN
correspondent on the ground had put the number of fatalities at only
14.
A
huge crater -- about three meters (10 ft) deep and eight meters (25
ft) wide -- was all that remained of the home, the all-news
network said, carrying footage of the mangled wreckage of nearby
buildings.
Many
residents were badly wounded, some with burned or severed limbs and
more victims are said to be buried, the BBC News Online quoted
eyewitnesses as saying.
Iraqis
were seen digging with their hands in the belief that several people
were trapped alive under the debris.
Troops
from the U.S. 101st Airborne Division at the scene claimed that
unidentified Iraqis had fired flares into the dump to ignite the
weapons, CNN added.
"An
assailant intentionally fired flares into the weapons cache," the
American network quoted a soldier with the unit as saying.
However,
Al-Jazeera correspondent quoted eyewitnesses as saying that it was the
work of U.S. forces who gathered such ammunitions around the Iraqi
capital.
U.S.
troops were forced to pull back from the wreckage after being stoned
by residents furious that the arms had been left so close to their
homes after hostilities had ended.
It
is not clear if other caches are being stored around the area.
Hundreds
of Iraqis expressed their outrage at U.S. forces occupying the base in
the Baghdad neighborhood of Zafraniya, telling the CNN correspondent
they had warned the U.S. forces that the ordnance was a danger to
residents.
After
the
downfall of the Iraqi regime on April 9, U.S. Marines seized the
weapons and ammunition from Iraqi forces in and around Baghdad and
stored them at Zafraniya.
Some
caches have been exploded in controlled explosions, but CNN
correspondent said Saturday's blast "was different."
"It
went on for a long time," he added. "Rockets were going up
and spiraling."
He
reported seeing rockets going off into the sky, and said
"continuous explosions for at least half an hour had been felt in
downtown Baghdad."
