Despite bombings, civillian deaths down

Nearly simultaneous bombs struck commuters in a predominantly Shiite area on the southeastern edge of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least nine people and wounding about two dozen, police and hospital officials said.\nThe two blasts, which occurred about 30 yards apart at 7 a.m. in Jisr Diyala, were targeting government employees, construction workers and vendors preparing to travel into the capital, according to the officials.\nWomen and children were among the nine killed and 23 wounded, which also included three policemen who had been drinking tea bought from a vendor, the officials said.\nMohammed Nuaman, a 36-year-old store owner who was wounded by shrapnel in the shoulder, said rescue efforts were complicated by a damaged bridge. The bridge, which spans the Diyala River, a Tigris tributary, to connect the area with Baghdad proper, was hit by two bombings in May and was still under repair.\n“I heard a big explosion at the bus station area and another bomb went off about 30 seconds later, as I was heading to the area,” Nuaman said, describing the burned bodies of victims in pools of blood.\n“Locals rushed to the area and carried some wounded by their cars to the nearby Zafaraniyah hospital before the ambulances and police arrived about 15 minutes later,” Nuaman said.\nJisr Diyala is about 10 miles southeast of Baghdad.\nHours later, mortar shells rained onto a neighborhood in Hibhib, some 30 miles north of Baghdad, killing at least five civilians and wounding 17, police said. Hibhib, a Sunni town in volatile Diyala province, was the area where al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike last year.\nA police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information, said the mortar rounds were launched from a nearby district and were targeting Sunnis who had turned against al-Qaida in Hibhib.\nDespite the bombings facing Iraqis in Baghdad and elsewhere, October is on course to record the second consecutive decline in Iraqi civilian deaths. The current pace of civilian deaths would put October’s toll at fewer than 900. The figure was 1,023 for last month and 1,956 for August, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.