BAGHDAD — Masked assailants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns shot up a jewelry market in Baghdad Tuesday, killing 15 people before they fled with a large quantity of gold in an attack authorities swiftly blamed on a cash-strapped al-Qaida in Iraq.
The attack was the latest in a violent crime wave in Iraq that has swelled over the past year as violence has dramatically ebbed. Authorities have also blamed similar robberies in the past on battle-hardened former insurgents unable to find legitimate work.
The area of the attack in the southwestern neighborhood of Baiyaa was later sealed off by security forces. A dead body that police and witnesses said belonged to one of the assailants was covered with a cloth on the bloodstained sidewalk amid the shattered glass of shop windows.
Mohammed Elaiwi Nassir, a witness who owns a real estate office nearby, said the attackers were heavily armed, including with RPGs, and that security forces were slow to respond.
He told The Associated Press the gunmen arrived around 11:20 a.m. in five or six cars, one of them a minibus. Each vehicle had three masked gunmen inside, some armed with RPGs and others with machine-guns and pistols fitted with silencers. Link
