IRAQ Errant mortars take life of child

Children were playing in the street before the huge blast, witnesses said.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two mortar shells targeting a hotel housing foreigners in the capital hit a house instead Friday night, killing a child and wounding three others. A third mortar hit a nearby road, causing no damage.
Crowds including panicked parents searching for children gathered at the scene, where police fired Kalashnikovs into the air to push people back.
The twin blasts, which shook much of the center of Baghdad, were aimed at the al-Sadeer Hotel, police said. The house that was hit was empty, witnesses said, and the casualties had been in the street at the time of the attack.
One child, age 5 or 6, was killed, police said. Three other people were hurt.
"Suddenly, we heard a big boom, and I thought the ceiling was going to crash on my head," said Abbass Jawad Mohammed, who was inside a nearby home.
Witnesses said children had been playing in the street just before the blast. One barefoot woman 1raced out, frantically looking for her child.
"We lost him, we lost him," she screamed.
New laws criticized
In sermons across Iraq on Friday, Shiite and Sunni clerics criticized new laws giving interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi the right to declare limited martial law, impose curfews and freeze suspected insurgents' assets.
"This decision is the opposite of democracy," said Sheik Mahdi al-Summaidai, imam of Ibn Taimiyah, a Sunni mosque in Baghdad attended mainly by Muslims of the strict Wahhabi sect.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in a sermon read on his behalf, warned the "law might be misused and be a fabricated pretext ... to target the honest men of resistance who repulsed the occupation forces."