At Least 95 Killed in Series of Attacks in Baghdad

At Least 95 Killed in Series of Attacks in Baghdad
By SAM DAGHER9
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: August 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


BAGHDAD — At least 95 people were killed and 563 wounded in a series of truck bombings and other attacks on Wednesday that rocked areas around official buildings in central Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said.

Taken together, the attacks were among the most devastating in Baghdad since the withdrawal of American forces from street patrols at the end of June. American soldiers and officials in the area were left helpless, as witnessed by six soldiers snapping a few quick pictures of the devastation from personal cameras before ducking out of the streets.

The explosions, at least one of them close to the heavily fortified Green Zone security area, sent plumes of dark smoke billowing over the capital, ripped a gaping hole in a compound wall and set cars ablaze, trapping drivers inside.

“The whole thing is just so disgusting,” the United States ambassador, Christopher R. Hill, told The New York Times as he read reports from his staff about the extent of the damage while on an official visit to the northern city of Kirkuk. “They’re just psychopathic.”

The blasts were so intense that parts of a main highway near the Finance Ministry collapsed and were littered with shrapnel and splotches of blood. At roughly the same time, attacks in other parts of the city, including three roadside bombs and some mortar and rocket fire, left 17 people wounded, Iraqi officials said. In response to the chaos, the police and the Iraqi Army closed two main bridges over the Tigris River.

The devastation comes less than three weeks after the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki started removing blast walls from the streets of Baghdad after a top Iraqi Army official close to the premier announced that “security is not an issue anymore.”

Ambassador Hill, at a news briefing on Wednesday, called the bombings “truly ghastly acts that have to be thoroughly condemned by everybody.”

He added: “They really targeted the entire international community, and in particular there was an effort to target Iraq’s desire to be a strong member of the international community.”

The two truck bombs on Wednesday morning struck the Foreign and Finance Ministries within three minutes of each other, officials said. The first explosion came shortly before 11 a.m., sending white smoke into the sky. But then, minutes later, a more powerful blast shook another area of Baghdad near the Foreign Ministry, shattering windows inside the nearby Green Zone and shaking houses in many parts of the city.

The truck that caused the second blast was driven a suicide bomber who stopped against the wall of the Foreign Ministry just off the busy intersection, according to an American military officer speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the bombing. The driver then detonated two tons of explosives.

The death toll at the Foreign Ministry was at least 47 people, and at least 28 people were killed at the Finance Ministry, officials said.

“We heard a huge explosion at 11 a.m. and suddenly we started to hear voices of employees screaming in pain,” a top Foreign Ministry official said in a phone interview, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the blast. “Dust has covered everything.”

He added: “The secondary ceilings, doors, water cycles, offices and the air-conditioning system have collapsed over our heads. The whole ministry was destroyed. Only the ministry building structure survived the blast.”

Since the beginning of July, a series of bombs in northern Iraq, for which officials blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and its affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq, has killed at least 140 people. The attacks on Wednesday might have been a message from these groups that they could also wreck havoc in the capital, although no one immediately took responsibility for the attacks.

The blast near the Foreign Ministry left a crater 30 feet deep and 60 feet wide.

The bombing set fire to cars and other vehicles clogging the road outside the ministry, trapping their occupants in the inferno.

One body could still be seen burning in a car while at least 12 others had been piled onto a pickup truck to be driven away. The blast shattered the front wall of 10-story main building of the ministry, leaving offices wrecked and people trapped inside. One ministry worker was seen shouting desperately for help from the seventh floor. On the third floor, an entire slab of concrete appeared to have crashed to the ground.

The six American soldiers took photographs from point-and-shoot cameras at the wrecked ministry and then quickly left. Later, an American officer, who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said United States forces were constrained by the agreement under which they handed over security responsibilities to Iraqi forces at the end of June. “As much as we want to come, we have to wait to be asked now,” he said.


That did not assuage some Iraqis, who blamed the 2003 American invasion for their nation’s perils and woes.

“This country is finished,” said one resident, Jamil Jaber, 45, whose five-room home behind the Foreign Ministry had been flattened by the explosion, crushing to death a 4-month-old infant. “It’s just robbery and killing.” He then cursed the United States and former President George W. Bush.

Across from the Foreign Ministry, an apartment building had been wrecked, injuring many inside. A woman on the sixth floor had been slashed by a ceiling fan that fell on her in the chaos, said Tariq Qader, 35, who said he rescued her.

Nearby, a girls’ secondary school, closed for summer vacations, had collapsed. After the blast, Kurdish bodyguards protecting the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, fanned out nervously into the streets outside.

Qassim Atta, a spokesman for the Baghdad operations command, said on the state-owned television station Iraqiya, “The situation is under control.” He added, “We say that the battle is ongoing, and there are days when we win and days when we lose.”

He blamed the “remnants of the Baath Party, criminal gangs and takfiris” with the latter being Sunni extremists. He said they want to “influence the security and political process.”

These attacks, in the heart of the capital and against crucial ministries, one headed by a Kurd and another by a Shiite, appeared to carry a number of messages.

They happened two days after the commander of the United States military in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, said American forces would be deployed along with Iraqi forces and Kurdish pesh merga troops in northern Iraq to prevent Qaeda-linked militants from exploiting friction between Arabs and Kurds.

The attacks also coincided with a state visit by Prime Minister Maliki to neighboring Syria. In the capital, Damascus, Mr. Maliki was expected to urge the authorities to do more to stop the flow of militants through its borders with Iraq. He was also expected to ask the Syrian authorities to clamp down on the activities of loyalists to the former of Saddam Hussein who are based there. They remain unreconciled with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and continue to foment unrest inside Iraq.

The attacks came amid intense political jockeying and pressure on Mr. Maliki from both Iran and the United States as to the shape of his next coalition in the upcoming national elections in January.

Iran wants Mr. Maliki to build a reconstituted version of his current Shiite-led coalition while the United States feels that a broad national coalition that would encompass not only Sunnis but also those who may have embraced the insurgency previously would be the only way forward for Iraq. “If you stay sectarian you push violence and problems to the future,” a senior American official said Tuesday on condition of anonymity.



Reporting was contributed by Mohammed Hussein, Anwar J. Ali, Riyadh Mohammed and Abeer Mohammed from Baghdad, and Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Kirkuk, Iraq.