Iraqi police say children were decoy in car bombing

Iraqi police said Wednesday that children were used in a weekend car bombing in which the driver of the car that exploded gained permission to park in a busy shopping area after he pointed out that he was leaving his children in the back seat.

The account appeared to confirm that given by a U.S. general on Tuesday. He said children were used in a Sunday bombing in northern Baghdad and labeled it a brutal new tactic put use by insurgent bombers to overcome tightened security in the capital as part of the five-week-old security crackdown.

Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations on the Joint Staff, said the vehicle used in the attack was waved through a U.S. military checkpoint because two children were visible in the back seat. He said it was the first reported use of children in a car bombing in Baghdad.

"Children in the back seat lowered suspicion, (so) we let it move through, they parked the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back," Barbero told reporters in Washington. "The brutality and ruthless nature of this enemy hasn't changed."

Other U.S. officials said later that three Iraqi bystanders were killed in the attack near a marketplace in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah, besides the two children, and seven people were injured. The officials had no other details, including the estimated ages of the children.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, confirmed Barbero's account but said he couldn't provide more details.

Two policemen, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said the general was referring to a car bomb that killed eight Iraqis and wounded 28 others in the predominantly Shiite district of Shaab on Sunday. The attack targeted people cooking food at open-air grills in the street, to offer as charity on a Shiite Muslim holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad's death.

A senior official in the Shaab police department said an investigation was opened after the owner of a shop in the market district said he and other residents initially told a man he could not park his car on the street but relented after seeing the children in the back seat.

Another police officer also said witnesses had reported seeing two children inside the car before it exploded. He said three other cases had been registered since last year in which women and children were used in parked car bombings, although they reportedly got out of the cars before the explosions in those cases.

The reports could not be independently confirmed and key details were missing from the police accounts, such as the ages and genders of the children, whether they were among the victims and what happened to their bodies.

The U.S. military has warned that insurgents are finding new ways to bypass stepped up security measures and kill as many people as possible and spread panic. A series of bombings using toxic chlorine since Jan. 28 also raised concerns.

Insurgent tactics have evolved since the war started four years ago and youths often have been among their victims, but the use of children as decoys would signal a new level of ruthlessness in the fight for control of the capital.

In the deadliest cases, a suicide car bomber sped up to American soldiers distributing candy to children July 2005 and detonated his explosives, killing up to 27 people, including about a dozen children and a U.S. soldier.

That occurred about nine months after 35 Iraqi children were killed in a string of bombs that exploded as American troops were handing out candy at a government-sponsored celebration to inaugurate a sewage plant in west Baghdad, reports AP.

U.S. troops also have said that Sunni insurgents send children to check out U.S. defenses or warn of approaching patrols, and that Shiite militias encourage children to hurl stones and gasoline bombs at U.S. convoys, hoping to lure American troops into ambushes or provoke them into shooting back.