A series of suicide car bomb attacks rocked Baghdad on Wednesday killing up to 26 people.
At least four separate bombs went off within 90 minutes of each other in a coordinated strike. The United States military said 26 people were killed, although Iraqi officials put the toll lower at around 12 dead.
It began just after 7am when a truck bomb exploded outside a building housing Australian troops in Jadriyah, in the city centre. At least two Iraqis died and several others were injured, including two Australian soldiers.
”It was a car bomb aimed at the building where the security people are based,” said Australia’s ambassador, Howard Brown. ”It was quite a substantial explosion.”
The most devastating explosion came 30 minutes later near the al-Alahi hospital and a police station in central Baghdad. The US military said at least 18 people were killed, including five Iraqi policemen.
Another suicide bomb hit a checkpoint near the Baghdad international airport, killing two Iraqi guards, and a fourth bomb killed two Iraqi soldiers and two civilians at the Muthanna air base, also in Baghdad. A fifth bomb detonated outside a bank in the capital, injuring policemen as they queued to collect their salaries a day before Eid al-Adha celebrations.
Within hours the militant group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had claimed responsibility for three of the blasts, including the Australian attack.
The bombings pointed to the sophistication of the insurgency and its ready supply of volunteer suicide bombers.
Although the US military has launched several major offensives in Sunni towns such as Falluja, Samarra and Mosul, the insurgency remains a strong enough threat to overshadow the first elections since the war due in 10 days.
US, British and Iraqi officials say the elections should go ahead on time.
Carlos Valenzuela, the chief United Nations election adviser in Iraq, said a vote could become impossible if election officials abandoned their jobs in mass resignations because of the violence, although there was no sign of that yet.
But the US military said that nearly all the election staff in Mosul had resigned. Replacements were being sought.
Meanwhile two security contractors, including a Briton, working for the London-based firm Janusian Security Risk Management were killed on Wednesday after an attack near the city of Beiji, north of Baghdad, according to the US military. Their car had been ambushed by insurgents.
Oil officials in Baghdad said Iraq’s main northern pipeline which exports oil through Turkey would remain closed for up to 20 days after a bomb attack on Monday. The attack came just after repairs had been completed following an attack last month.
A member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a Kurdish political party, was killed and another wounded in a gun attack in Baghdad.
The US admitted it had shot dead two civilians in Tal Afar, near Mosul, as the vehicle they were in approached a military convoy. There were six children in the back of the vehicle who escaped unhurt. – Guardian Unlimited Â