A traffic lieutenant who asked not to be identified told Mafkarat al-Islam that US solders came racing crazily out of the street less than a minute before the explosion. Then after the blast they did not go back to where it happened but continued to hurry out of the area.

A captain in the fire department who asked not to be identified told Mafkarat al-Islam that the explosion was extremely powerful and left a big crater in the earth – something that other car bombs do not do. The captain said that this was because the bombs used by the Iraqi Resistance are made from Russian-made TNT that was in the possession of the Army of the Republic of Iraq before the US occupation.

He said that former soldiers are very familiar with the effects of such explosives, and know that during an explosion it blows upwards, not downwards, and for this reason US forces prohibit the taking of photographs from the scenes of attacks where the effects of explosions are obvious.

When the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent asked the fire captain what he meant by his remarks and whether he was accusing the Americans of setting the blast, he replied, “The Traffic Stop Director for the area, Ahmad Kamal was fired because of his statement one hour after the explosion in which he said that the US forces were behind the blast. This was regarded as an ‘irresponsible statement’ by him and attributed to the fact that he had lost control of himself and had a breakdown after the bombing and to the fact that he is a Sunni and does not want to believe that what is happening in Iraq is ‘terrorism’.”