47 Are Killed in Bombings in Baghdad and Northern Iraq

47 Are Killed in Bombings in Baghdad and Northern Iraq
By SAM DAGHER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


BAGHDAD — At least 47 people were killed and hundreds were wounded early Monday morning as a series of bomb attacks struck Baghdad and an entire village near the northern city of Mosul.

Nearly 100 people have been killed and scores wounded in Mosul and Baghdad since Friday in the worst outburst in violence since June 30, when Iraqis officially took the lead on national security and American troops largely withdrew to their bases.

The attacks raised serious concerns about the Iraqi government’s ability to maintain security. It also highlighted the underlying conflicts that continue to fuel violence, especially the rift between Arab and Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq and the continued disenfranchisement felt by many Sunni Arabs and former regime loyalists.

In the most devastating attack on Monday, a pair of large flatbed trucks packed with bombs exploded simultaneously shortly after dawn, destroying a village known as Khazna, about 10 miles east of Mosul, according to Munthir Saba, an official in the adjacent town of Bartella.

Hospital officials in Mosul said at least 28 people were killed and 155 wounded, but Mr. Saba warned that the casualty figures could increase because rescue efforts were still ongoing.

The village is inhabited mainly by Shiite Shabaks, a small Kurdish-speaking minority. Most are farmers and laborers.

In Baghdad, two early-morning blasts struck lines of workers who had gathered to look for jobs as day laborers, one in the Amil district, the other in Shurta al-Rabiaa, both of which are mainly Shiite areas.

The Amil blast went off about 5:30 a.m., killing seven and wounding 46. About 45 minutes later, the explosion in Shurta killed nine and wounded 35, according to an official at the Interior Ministry who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Both explosions were attributed to bombs in cars that had been parked in the areas for a long period of time.

“I saw three or four bodies piled up over each other,” said Abu Sabah, 43, a teahouse owner in Shorta. “Body parts were scattered all over. It was awful.”

Later, in neighborhoods across Baghdad, six roadside bombs detonated, as well as a bomb placed in a minibus. At least three people were killed and 23 wounded, according to the same official. One attack was on a popular ice cream shop in the Karada district.

In Khazna, the explosions left two large craters in different sections of the village. One was filled with water mixed with blood. The chassis and big wheel of what appeared to be one of the trucks used in the attack lay atop leveled houses. In what looked like the village’s main road, storefronts were ripped up, and destroyed vehicles were tossed everywhere.

Mr. Saba and other officials who were at the scene said the bombs were placed in large trucks that had been parked overnight in the village. At least 40 homes had been leveled, they said.

Mr. Saba said the explosions happened in quick succession about 5 a.m. and shattered windows at his home in Bartella, a few miles away.

A bulldozer shoveled debris while a crane lifted slabs of concrete to rescue people trapped underneath. Women wailed and slapped their faces in grief. Men held up photographs of loved ones and sobbed.

“Twelve members of my family are all gone,” one said.

The Mosuliya television station, which is owned by the provincial government, broadcast images of rows of gutted homes and others reduced to heaps of rubble mixed with bed frames, mattresses, furniture and bloodstained pillows.

“We do not want a sectarian war,” said a tearful resident, who was not identified.

“Look Mr. Prime Minister and Mr. Interior Minister, where is the security that you speak about?” he asked. “Is it this catastrophe?”

Shortly after the attack, the provincial government issued a statement calling on Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to dispatch military enforcements to the area and evict Kurdish forces from the Nineveh Plain and other parts of the province.

It said the attack happened because the provincial and the central government were not fully in control of Nineveh Province, which is a mosaic of ethnic and sectarian groups.

The sprawling, seething city of Mosul, among the most violent places in Iraq, is home to militants with ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the mostly homegrown insurgent group that is known to have some foreign leadership. The city is also the home to insurgents linked to the Baath Party.

Most American forces have withdrawn from posts within Mosul and are now garrisoned at a base.

A string of attacks struck Mosul and Baghdad on Friday, the weekly day of public prayer in Islam. Those bombings killed almost 50 and wounded hundreds, police officials said, and they came at the end of an important Shiite religious occasion.

Those attacks occurred just two days after the Iraqi government said it would lift all blast walls from the main roads in the capital, and the head of Baghdad’s operations command, Maj. Gen. Abud Qanbar, declared that “security is not an issue anymore.”

On July 31, five Shiite mosques in Baghdad had been bombed in coordinated attacks. At least 29 people were killed in those blasts.

Reporting was contributed by Rod Nordland, Abeer Mohammed and Riyadh Mohammed from Baghdad and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul.