When deployed many good poeple often send us care packages, sometimes complete strangers have sent boxes of sweets, toliet paper and magazines. Alot of sweets, seemed only fair to share with the kids right? After all it's more than we can eat anyways, why not?At least 26 Iraqis, almost all of them children, have been killed by a suicide car bombing in south-eastern Baghdad.
A US soldier is also said to have died in the blast. Another three US soldiers are reported to have been injured.
A car drove up to a US army vehicle and blew up as troops gave sweets to the children, a witness said.
Hundreds of Iraqis have died in attacks by militants opposed to the US presence and a Shia-led government that took charge in Baghdad earlier this year.
'Pools of blood'
"Many Iraqi civilians, mostly children, were around the Humvee at the time of the blast," US military spokesman Sgt David Abrams told the Reuters news agency.
I rushed outside to find my son. I only found his bicycle
Victim's father
"Suddenly a suicide car bomber drove round from a side street and blew himself up," he said.
A television cameraman working for the Reuters agency said nearby houses had been demolished by the explosion and pools of blood collected in the street.
The blast is said to have taken place as the US patrol was passing through Baghdad's eastern al-Jedidah district which is populated mainly be Shia Muslims.
Shocked relatives
At the nearby Kindi hospital, correspondents say hundreds of distraught relatives wandered along the blood-soaked corridors shouting and screaming as they looked for their children, many of whom were badly mutilated.
US troops hand out sweets to Iraqi children (photo: Hugh Sykes)
US troops often hand out sweets to befriend Iraqi children
An official said the bodies of 24 children had been delivered to the mortuary.
Abu Hamed, who lost his 12-year-old son in the blast, told the AFP news agency he was at home when he heard the explosion.
"I rushed outside to find my son. I only found his bicycle," he said.
He said he found his son at the Kindi hospital mortuary.
"I recognised him from his head. The rest of the body was completely burnt."
The area of eastern Baghdad where the blast took place has a mixed community of Sunnis, Shia and Christians, BBC correspondent Richard Galpin reports.
A bomb blast in Baghdad in September last year killed at least 34 children.
This attack also saw the victims gather round US troops who were handing out sweets, to mark the opening of a water treatment plant.
Clearly these men didn't like that. They didn't like the idea of Iraqi childern getting something they enjoied from Westerners. It seems to be trend. In fact in this case it was so importent to them that they killed those childern. Way to strike out for the freedom of fellow muslims there guys.
It becomes more and more clear to me that these people do not care about anyone. Not men, not women or childern, no matter what their race, religion or nationality. What do they care about is being in control and their chosen methoeds to gain it? Murder, Maiming, Fear. In Afghaistan they took a soccer stadium built for the people of that nation, by the UN, and made it a center of executions the majority of the victums were women. In London they took a public transportation system and used it to deliver bombs. And now they took free candy and used it has a chance to murder childern. I grow tired of allowing these creatures so much has air.
at terrorists.
:thumbsup