Baghdad, Iraq ? A U.S.-held weapons cache laden with 80 Iraqi missiles exploded Saturday on the teeming edge of Baghdad, killing at least six people and pummeling homes for miles around with a cascade of warheads, rockets and mortars.

The U.S. military blamed unknown attackers who they said fired four flares into the sprawling open missile dump. But hundreds of enraged, screaming Iraqis blamed Iraq’s new American overseers.

“This is the safety that Bush promised us?” demanded Munthir Safir, the blood of his family dried on the cloth of his white caftan. Around him, wailing women collapsed over the coffins of two adults and four teenagers.

“No Saddam! No Bush! Yes to Islam!” fist-waving men shouted. The disaster touched off protests in the stricken Zafaraniyah neighborhood and in the city center.

Hours later, smoke still surged from the blackened crater left at the missile cache. Explosives boomed, a rocket whistled and rounds popped. One unexploded missile protruded from a lawn. U.S. forces promised to send removal experts.

The disaster struck at 7:50 a.m. in Baghdad as residents slept or assembled bread and tea for breakfast.

Out of sight of U.S. troops at the depot, someone fired four flares over a wall around an open field where ordnance had been stored, said Sgt. 1st Class Ronald King, a witness.

Americans said some of the tactical weapons had been stored there by Saddam’s regime, which had stashed such items in schools, homes and other populated areas.

The U.S. military had put some of the ordnance there itself, however, collecting abandoned Iraqi caches from around the city for later disposal, King said.

The cache included Russian-made Frog-7s and Iraq’s own Al Samoud 2 — 80 missiles in all, said Col. John Peabody, commanding officer of the U.S. Army’s 11th Engineering Brigade, which had been helping at the site.

Iraqi Munthir Safir, who lost six members of his immediate family when an American ammunition dump exploded and destroyed his home, hugs a young boy at the explosion site. Unknown attackers fired flares Saturday at the dump on Baghdad's southeastern outskirts, American soldiers said, setting off explosions.

The flares hit an ammunition pit, setting fire to wooden ammo crates, King said. In a flash, deadly remnants of Saddam’s regime were pounding homes without warning. Booms rattled windows across the city.

About a mile away, a missile plowed into a dirt lane between two rows of crude two-story homes. Walls crumbled and roofs blew off, demolishing four houses. Inside one, the impact killed a 50-year-old worker, his four teenage children and his 23-year-old daughter-in-law, a new mother.

“Our house collapsed. That’s all I remember,” Mohammed Khazaal, 15, said from a hospital bed, his head wrapped in bandages and gashes across his body. A brother of the dead young woman, he had been sleeping when the missile hit.

Nearby, medical workers treated deep cuts in the legs of Zeineb Thamer, the year-old daughter of the woman who died. Blood matted Zeineb’s light-brown hair. In English, the message on her T-shirt declared, “Welcome, Little Friend.”

Peabody said 10 or more Iraqis were wounded. Two of them were said to be near death.