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40 killed in Baghdad blasts

ZAAFARANIYA (Iraq) April 26. As many as 40 Iraqi civilians were killed and many badly wounded in a series of huge blasts at an arms dump on the outskirts of Baghdad today, an Iraqi medic said.

U.S. troops blamed unidentified attackers who fired flares into the munitions store.

But local people turned their anger on the Americans, shooting and forcing them back, soldiers said.

Some soldiers were wounded, an Army Sergeant-Major said at Zaafaraniya, a mixed residential and industrial suburb on the southern edge of the capital.

The explosions, lasting about an hour, were heard in the city centre from about 8 a.m. local time.

U.S. troops said they were caused by controlled detonations to destroy Iraqi munitions as part of a continuing programme.

But later, an officer at the scene said assailants had sparked the chain reaction by firing flares into the dump.

A local medic, travelling in an Iraqi civilian ambulance ferrying casualties between the blast scene and a hospital, said there had been many victims.

Asked how many were killed, he said, ``forty.''

Local people said several people were believed to be still trapped in the rubble of a wrecked building, apparently hit by an errant surface-to-surface missile from the arms storage dump.

Reuters

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