BAGHDAD, Feb 11 (AFP) - Workers at Baghdad's Happiness Bakery did not even have time to put the dough in the oven Friday morning before gunmen rushed in and opened fire, leaving the white tiles blood-smeared.
Witnesses said about 10 people were killed there and the Lion Bakery next door on a dusty street in eastern Baghdad's Al-Amin district.
The gunmen blocked the exits and let rip with automatic gunfire and grenades. Among the dead were two apprentices, barely 13 years old.
Posters featuring Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and deceased Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr still hang in the bullet-riddled shop windows.
Police said the double attack on Martyrs' Street could have been a criminal or tribal dispute, but residents were adamant about who the culprits were.
"It's the (fundamentalist Sunni) Wahhabis who came to sow terror at the beginning of the month of Muharram, when Islam forbids you to kill so much as a fly," said Abu Fatima, a neighbour.
"I hit the ground when the first grenades exploded because I knew that neither the police nor the American soldiers would come to save us, the poorest of the poor," he said, as he stood in front of the scene of the carnage.
The 32-year-old worker said he lives in fear.
"Three weeks ago, the same attackers planted a bomb in front of the Happiness Bakery and the Americans were called and came to defuse it," he said, describing the bomb as a warning.
"But the police took three-quarters of an hour to come this morning and when I looked outside I could see the inhabitants lining up the bodies in the street before the ambulances arrived."
People gathered on the pavement opposite the two bakeries to discuss the shootings said they could not understand the reason for the cold-blooded killings.
The mood is heavy ahead of Ashurra, the Shiite mourning month, with many believing that Sunni fundmantalists will not let Shiites commemmorate in peace the murder of their most venerated Imam Hussein more than 1,300 years ago.
"There is a global conspiracy against Shiites which brings together Americans, (Sunni fundamentalist) Salafists, Baathists and their agents," said 42-year-old medical worker Hussein Abu Zahra.
"America dominates the world but isn't able to control the situation. I can't believe it," said electrician Mohammed Ibrahim, 42.
"Our militias, the Mehdi Army (of radical Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr) and the Badr Brigades (linked to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) would have been more effective against the violence which we face and we shouldn't have dissolved them," said office worker Abu Mohammed, 38.
"Look at the (Kurdish militia) peshmergas who bring security to where they live in northern Iraq," he added, accusing police of being impotent to stop attacks in Baghdad.
In another attack on Shiites Friday, 14 people were killed and at least 23 wounded in a car bomb attack outside a mosque in Balad Ruz, 60 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of the capital.
02/11/2005 15:44 GMT - AFP