Bomber kills 17 in Baghdad cafe

A bomber blew himself up at a coffee shop in a Shia neighbourhood of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 17 people and wounding 20 more, security and medical sources said.

“The bomber entered the coffee shop and blew himself in the middle of the crowd,” a security source told AFP, saying the incident occurred in the northern Greyaat neighbourhood.

A medic at the al-Kindi hospital said the wounded were brought to the hospital and some were also admitted in the city’s other hospital, Medical City.

The bombing was the first since a death sentence on Saddam Hussein was delivered on Sunday and since a round-the-clock curfew in the capital was lifted early onTuesday.

The Iraqi High Tribunal sentenced Saddam to death by hanging for ordering the killing of 148 Shias from the village of Dujail in the 1980s.

Earlier on Tuesday, Saddam called on Iraqis to forgive each other, as he returned to court in Baghdad on new charges of genocide against the Kurds.

“I call on all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands,” he said, two days after another panel sentenced him to death for crimes against humanity.

Saddam, wearing a black suit and white shirt with a handkerchief, entered the court and took his seat quietly among the other six defendants.

The seven men are charged with carrying out a genocide against Iraq’s Kurds during the Anfal military campaign of the late 1980s.

Once the defendants had arrived, the chief judge then convened the session and called the first of four witnesses, Qahar Khalil Mohammed.

Eyewitness testimony

Mohammad told the court he and other villagers had surrendered to Iraqi soldiers after being promised that Saddam had issued an amnesty.

Instead, he said, they were lined up at the bottom of a hill and soldiers opened fire.

“When they fired in our direction we all fell to the ground,” he said.

“I saw my father and two brothers had been killed as well as 18 of my other relatives.”

He was wounded but managed to survive, Mohammad said, pointing to a bullet wound scar on his forehead in court.

Saddam later challenged the testimony, asking: “There is nobody to check this testimony. Who supports his claim? Nobody. Will that way lead us to the truth?”

Execution date

On Sunday, another five-judge panel convicted Saddam of ordering the death of nearly 150 Shia Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail.

He and two others were sentenced to death by hanging. Four co-defendants received lesser sentences and one was acquitted.

The Dujail case is subject to appeal, and the Anfal genocide trial will continue while the appeal is under way.

On Monday, the chief prosecutor said the nine-judge appeals panel would rule on Saddam’s appeal against his death sentence by mid-January.

That could set in motion a possible execution by mid-February.

Aljazeera + Agencies