Bloodbath in Baghdad as series of blasts kill 200
Streets runs with blood after bombs rip open parts of city
YESTERDAY will go down as a day of infamy for Iraqis who are repeatedly told by the US that their security is improving.
Almost 200 people were killed on one of the bloodiest days of the four-year-old war, when car bombs ripped through five neighbourhoods across the city, exposing the failure of the two-month-old US security plan.
In the aftermath of the blasts American and Iraqi soldiers who rushed to the scene of the explosions were pelted with stones by angry crowds.
The people shouted: "Where is the security plan? We are not protected by this plan." Billowing clouds of oily black smoke rose into the sky over the Iraqi capital as five bombs tore through crowded markets and streets leaving the ground covered in charred bodies and severed limbs.
"I saw dozens of dead bodies," said a witness in Sadriyah, a mixed Shia- Kurdish neighbourhood in west Baghdad where 118 people died and 139 were injured.
"Some people were burned alive inside minibuses. Nobody could reach them after the explosion. There were pieces of flesh all over the place. Women were screaming and shouting for their loved ones who died."
The escalation in devastating bomb attacks by Sunni insurgents against Shia civilians is discrediting the US security plan, implemented by a 'surge' in American troop numbers. Launched on February 14, it was intended to give the Iraqi government greater control over the streets of Baghdad.
The Mehdi Army Shia militia, blamed for operating death squads against Sunni civilians, had adopted a lower profile.
It has avoided military confrontation with the US but this is unlikely to continue in the wake of these devastating bomb attacks.
The Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is seen as being unable to defend his own people.
Last night he ordered the arrest of the Iraqi army colonel who was in charge of security in the region around the Sadriyah market were at least 127 died and 148 were wounded.
It was the second massive blast at the market since February 3.
Across all Iraq, the number of people killed or found dead was 233, which was second only to a total of 281 killed or found dead on November 23, 2006.
In the aftermath of the explosions one man waved his arms and shouted angrily: "Where's Maliki? Let him come and see what is happening here."
The enraged crowds throwing stones at American and Iraqi troops who arrived after the blasts also shouted 'Down with Maliki'.
The worst attack was on Sadriyah meat and vegetable market in the centre of Baghdad. It had already been the target of one of Baghdad's worst atrocities when a suicide bomber blew up a Mercedes truck on February 3 killing 137 people. Some of the casualties yesterday were construction workers rebuilding the marketplace.
One of the workers, 28-year-old Salih Mustafa, said he was waiting for a minibus to go home when the bomb went off at 4.05pm. "I rushed with others to give a hand and help the victims," he said. " I saw three bodies in a wooden cart, and civilian cars were helping to transfer the victims. It was really a horrible scene."
There is no doubt that the bombs were directed at killing as many Shias as possible.
About half an hour before the Sadriyah blast a suicide bomber had rammed a police checkpoint at the entrance to the great Shia bastion in Sadr City in east Baghdad. It is also the stronghold of Shia nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The explosion killed 33 and wounded 45, according to police.
Black smoke rose from blazing vehicles as people scrambled over the twisted wreckage of cars to try to rescue the wounded.
Grim death toll one of the highest so farALMOST 200 people were killed yesterday in what was being described as one of the Iraq war's bloodiest days.
The atrocities included:
* Gunmen killed three people in an attack on a vehicle near Baiji, north of Baghdad. Those killed were the son of Iraq's deputy interior minister and his two bodyguards.
* Another 25 decomposed bodies were found in a school in Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. The latest discovery came a day after 17 bodies were found in a deserted school in Ramadi.
* Eight bodies were discovered in Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad
* One army officer and a civilian were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Mosul's east, police said. Another three police were wounded.
* A car bomb in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite district of Sadriya killed 122 people and wounded 155, police said.
* A car bomb killed 35 people and wounded 75 near an intersection in the Shi'ite district of Sadr city.
* A car bomb killed 10 people and wounded 15 in the predominantly Shi'ite district of Karrada in central Baghdad, police said.* Two police were killed and eight wounded in a suicide car bomb attack at a police checkpoint in Baghdad.
* A bomb inside a minibus killed two people and wounded five near al-Shurja in central Baghdad.
* A suicide car bomb targeting a police patrol killed two policemen and wounded four, including two civilians, near Baghdad.
* One insurgent was killed and eight others were detained during two raids near Taji.
