WORLD
BAGHDAD – Four large bombs exploded in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 164 people and wounding scores. This was the deadliest day in the city since the start of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital two months ago.
The U.S. Defense Department called it “a very bad day in Iraq.”
In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in central Baghdad, killing at least 116 people and wounding 145, said Raad Muhsin, an offi cial at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.
A police offi cial confi rmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Among the dead were several construction workers who had been rebuilding the mostly Shiite marketplace after a bombing destroyed many shops and killed 137 people there in February, the police offi cial said.
The laborers typically fi nish work around 4 p.m. each day. One of those wounded, 28-year-old Salih Mustafa, said he was waiting for a minibus to head home when the blast went off at 4:05 p.m.
“I rushed with others to give a hand and help the victims,” he said. “I saw three bodies in a wooden cart, and civilian cars were helping to transfer the victims. It was really a horrible scene.”
The market is situated on a side street lined with shops and vendors selling produce, meat and other staples. It is also about 500 yards from a Sunni shrine.
NATION
SELMER, Tenn. – A preacher’s wife accused of murdering her husband testifi ed Wednesday that she doesn’t remember picking up the shotgun or pointing it at her husband, but she said she did not pull the trigger. She heard a “boom” as the shotgun fi red, she said.
“Something went off,” Mary Winkler said, crying on the witness stand.
She said she just wanted to talk to her husband, Matthew, when she went into their bedroom, but she was terrifi ed. Her husband was physically and sexually abusive, she said.
That day, Winkler said, she just wanted to stop him from being so mean.
She said she ran from the house after the gun fi red.
“I thought Matthew would be mad at me, and I didn’t know what he would do to me,” Winkler said.
Later, she returned to their bedroom in the parsonage and found Matthew on his back, with blood coming out of his mouth, nose and ears. “He was dead,” she said. A forensic pathologist testifi ed that Matthew Winkler had been shot in the back.
STATE&LOCAL
VIRGINIA BEACH – GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has postponed a speech scheduled for Tuesday at religious broadcaster Pat Robertson’s Regent University because of the shootings at Virginia Tech, across the state in Blacksburg.
Giuliani’s speech to Regent’s Executive Leadership Series luncheon has been moved to June 26, the school said.
“My thoughts and prayers continue to be with the survivors and the many friends, colleagues and family members of those who perished,” the former New York mayor said in a statement.
Regent has some 5,000 students studying on campuses in Virginia Beach and Washington, D.C., and also via online education. The school offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from a Christian perspective.