Bombings Kill 60 at University In Baghdad...At Mustansiriya University on Tuesday, sophomore Dyana Ayad had finished her Arabic elocution test, then walked through the college gardens, turned right toward a pedestrian overpass and joined the crowd of students waiting for buses. The pressure filled her ears a split second before she heard the sound of a bomb.
"I saw unbelievable things," the 20-year-old recalled Tuesday night. "There were tiny pieces of papers, burned papers everywhere. And dark smoke, white smoke. . . . I saw arms, legs, body parts flying in the air. The sky was raining burning paper and body parts."
Firefighters and police sped to the scene of the wreckage, near Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, doused the flaming cars and buses, and ferried bloodied students to hospitals throughout the city. Students ran in panic to find their friends, witnesses said, picking through what one student called "pieces of meat."
...The university's assistant president, Fadhil al-Amri, found a human head on the ground outside his office, next to a severed hand.
"No matter what I say to you, it is nothing like what happened. It is terrible," Amri said. "The terrorists are walking the streets in larger numbers than the policemen or the soldiers in the army. They can't do anything. There is no safety in this country."
About 24,000 students attend state-run Mustansiriya University's three colleges, in a middle-class Sunni Arab and Shiite Muslim neighborhood. University officials said there was no obvious sectarian motive behind the attack. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the bombings on supporters of deposed president Saddam Hussein. On Monday, two of Hussein's co-defendants were hanged for crimes against humanity; Hussein was executed Dec. 30.
"The followers of the ousted regime have been dealt a blow and their dreams buried forever," Maliki said in a statement. "So Saddamists and terrorists now target the world of knowledge and committed this act today against the innocent students of Mustansiriya University."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/17/AR2007011700456.htmlNYT: "3 Bombs Kill at Least 70 at University in Baghdad"...At least 70 people were killed at a largely Shiite university in northeastern Baghdad on Tuesday when a wave of explosions tore through a crowd of students and employees leaving the main gate minutes after classes ended.
Witnesses said the lethal strike of two car bombs and a suicide bomber at Mustansiriya University left the campus littered with shattered glass, body parts, ashen books and charred metal.
...Taqi al-Mussawi, president of Mustansiriya University, said it had not been the first strike at the university, one of the country’s most prominent, which takes its name from a medieval college of Sunni Islam.
All over Iraq, academics have been a magnet for bombings, kidnappings and assassinations for more than a year, in what appears to be a concerted effort to drive out the middle class, the secular and the educated.
But Mr. Mussawi and other witnesses said Tuesday’s violence seemed to be an escalation of the campaign. The force of the car bombs in particular shattered glass in the university’s academic headquarters 100 yards away, and turned windows, desks and supplies into shrapnel.
Mariam Hussein, 20, a literature student, said she had barely escaped injury while standing near the front gate in the crowd. The first blast seemed to come from a minibus a few steps away, she said; the second from near a restaurant down the block.
“I saw remains of human flesh,” she said. “It was horrifying. Flesh and blood were everywhere. People started to run, and there was a state of chaos. Some people fell on the ground and got trampled by others.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/world/middleeast/17baghdad.html?ref=world
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