Co-ordinated series of Iraq car bombs kill at least 120
Blasts in Baghdad come as election date unveiled
Wednesday December 09 2009
MORE than 120 people were killed in a string of car bombings in Baghdad yesterday as the Iraqi government announced a date for elections in the new year.
The interior ministry, a court building and the temporary home of the finance ministry were all targeted in the third co-ordinated attack on the heart of the city in four months.
The oil ministry, due to host the next in a series of auctions of contracts to international energy companies later this week, was also shaken.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the attacks bore the hallmarks of a collaboration between cells backed by al-Qaeda and supporters of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime.
They will renew fears of a surge of orchestrated attacks to disrupt the forthcoming general election. Soon after the blasts, the election commission said the vote would be held on March 6.
In the first explosion, a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives near a police patrol in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora.
Three policemen died, along with 12 students from a nearby technical college, an interior ministry official said.
About half an hour later, four bombs went off in the centre and west of the city within minutes of each other. One exploded in Shourja Market near the finance ministry. The other blasts went off near the interior ministry, Mustanseri university and the institute of fine arts.
At least one was detonated by a suicide bomber, while two are thought to have been detonated remotely, or by a timer. The finance ministry appeared to have suffered the worst casualties, from an ambulance rigged with explosives.
Officials gave numbers for the dead at between 122 and 127, while the number of wounded was put at 500.
Survivors said women and children were still buried under the debris of buildings.
Violence
The overall rate of violence in Iraq has continued to decline this year, ever since the American military withdrew from urban areas. But this is the third "spectacular" aimed at ministry buildings since August.
On that occasion, more than 100 people died in suicide truck explosions near the foreign and finance ministries. At the end of October, another double bombing killed 155.
The attacks come as a blow to the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who has made security a central plank of his campaign for re-election.
His Shia-led coalition has split, with a wide array of parties now seeking alliances across the sectarian divide.
The attacks, blamed on Sunni insurgents, appear to be designed to undermine him.
Mr Maliki said in a statement: "These cowardly terrorist attacks that took place in Baghdad today, after the Parliament succeeded in overcoming the last obstacle to conducting elections, confirms that the enemies of Iraq are aiming at creating chaos in the country, blocking political progress and delaying the elections."
Opposition leaders claim that corrupt security officers are allowing bombers through the checkpoints that ring the city, and accuse Mr Maliki of losing control of the situation. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
- Richard Spencer in Baghdad
Irish Independent
