Iraq Bombings Shatter Lull

Iraq Bombings Shatter Lull
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS, CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and ATHEER KAKAN
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: May 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/world/middleeast/22iraq.html?ref=global-home


BAGHDAD — Three bombings in Iraq on Thursday killed at least 21 people and wounded more than 50 others, as American soldiers, police officers and members of American-allied Awakening Councils were targeted, police officials said. Shattering a recent lull in violence, the bombings brought to more than 60 the number of people killed in a 24-hour period.

The Associated Press reported that three American soldiers were killed on Thursday morning in a roadside bombing in the southern Baghdad district of Dora while they were patrolling near a popular outdoor market.

Earlier, the Interior Ministry said a suicide bomber set off his explosives near an American patrol in the same neighborhood. It was not immediately clear if it was the same patrol.

The explosion in Dora killed at least 12 civilians and wounded 25 other people, said a police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

An hour earlier, a bomb placed in a trash container outside a Baghdad police station killed two police officers and wounded 20 other people, police officials said. Among the dead at Al-Ma’moon police station in the Mansour district was the station’s commander, said a police officer at the scene who spoke on similar conditions of anonymity.

An American soldier was among the wounded, he said. At least 12 Iraqi police officers were wounded in the blast.

Two hours earlier in Kirkuk, a restive city north of Baghdad, seven members of an Awakening Council were killed after a suicide bomber detonated himself in a group that had gathered to pick up paychecks, the police said.

Six other Awakening Council members were wounded in the explosion, the police said.

Awakening Councils are typically made up of former Sunni insurgents who once fought American soldiers, but are now allied with them. They have become a primary target of insurgent groups in Iraq.

The attacks followed a car bombing on Wednesday night near a popular takeout restaurant in the western part of Baghdad that killed as many as 40 people and wounded scores.

The car bombing, in the largely Shiite neighborhood of Shula, was the first major attack since a series of explosions in the last weeks of April left more than 160 dead. It fits what security officials have described as a possible pattern: a substantial decrease in the widespread violence that once plagued the city on a daily basis, punctuated by occasional more spectacular attacks.

Though April was the bloodiest month of 2009 so far, May had been largely quiet.

The car bombing occurred around 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday when a Kia minibus pulled into the square, its driver seemingly looking for a place to park, said Hadi Faleh, a tea vendor.

“I felt nothing,” Mr. Faleh said of the moment of the explosion. “And now I cannot hear anything.”

Mr. Faleh’s teenage son was thrown between burning cars, his torso saturated with shrapnel. Mr. Faleh took him to a hospital nearby.

Most of April’s attacks, like this one, took place in predominately Shiite areas, raising fears that insurgents were trying to stoke a return to sectarian violence.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has moved from emphasizing security issues to condemning government corruption, blamed loyalists from the government of Saddam Hussein for the April attacks. The government has recently trumpeted the capture of a man it says is the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, but the claim has been met with skepticism.

The occurrence of large-scale attacks in a city that is as heavily policed and thoroughly walled-off as Baghdad has fueled anger at the Iraqi security forces and has raised questions about their preparedness to take over from the Americans, who are scheduled to pull out of Iraqi cities on June 30.

Shula, which borders a largely Sunni area, was once the site of intense sectarian violence and a longtime stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia. Like the rest of the city, it has calmed down significantly in the past year and a half.

After the bomb went off, only 300 feet from an Iraqi military checkpoint, people tried to help the wounded and to free the workers who were trapped and burning in shops and restaurants.

“How was the car able to get in there while these checkpoints have all these technical devices?” asked Mr. Faleh, who was also wounded.

“All those guards,” Mr. Faleh’s wife said in disbelief.

Iraqi security forces quickly arrived on the scene and shut down the main roads into Shula. Before they did, a man there angrily berated the Iraqis at the checkpoint for the security breach.