Three car bombs exploded just minutes apart at a busy Baghdad bus station and a nearby hospital during morning rush hour on Wednesday, ripping through buses and killing at least 43 people.
Iraqi authorities said the bombings were aimed at terrorising people and triggering a collapse of the government.
The attacks, which broke a brief lull in major insurgent violence, came two days after politicians failed to draft a new Constitution because of sharp differences on key issues, raising concerns of fresh political turmoil.
Two car bombs exploded 10 minutes apart at the bus station in the central district of Al-Nahda and a third exploded near Al-Kindi hospital in the same neighbourhood.
At least 43 people were killed and another 76 wounded, an interior ministry official and medics said.
”The victims from the bombings were admitted to various city hospitals and the toll has now gone up to 43 dead and 76 wounded,” the official said.
One of the bombs at the Al-Nahda bus station left a 2m-wide crater on the road, while mangled remains of a police car could be seen lying on top of another vehicle.
At least three buses were gutted by fire. The vehicles would have been packed with passengers at the time of the explosion.
Al-Nahda is a major bus station that links the capital with the predominantly Shi’ite regions to the south of Baghdad.
The third car bomb exploded in a leafy part of the neighbourhood where people usually seek shade in the blazing heat of Baghdad’s summer, especially during the rush hour.
Police fired warning shots to try to evacuate the area, fearful of suicide bombers targeting the gathering crowds.
The bombings seemed clearly aimed at killing as many civilians as possible. Most rebel attacks usually target Iraq’s fledgling security forces.
Al-Qaeda has issued a number of internet threats against those who plan to participate in a scheduled referendum on a Constitution in mid-October.
”One aim of the bombers is to put fear in the hearts of Iraqi people and the other intention is to trigger a government collapse,” government spokesperson Leith Kubba said on state-owned Iraqia television.
Wednesday’s bombings occurred after attempts to write the country’s first post-Saddam Hussein Constitution by a Monday deadline failed, prompting Parliament to give politicians another week to complete the charter.
”This is a one-time extension … if Iraq misses the next deadline, we have to dissolve the National Assembly, the government will collapse and fresh elections will have to be held,” Munther al-Fadhal, a member of the Constitution panel, said on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and other politicians downplayed the crisis.
”The demography of Iraq and its complicated political map” should be taken into consideration, Jaafari said. ”The delay was for one week only and the pending points do not need a longer period.”
But politicians spoke of intractable differences between the Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish representatives battling to hammer out an agreement by the new August 22 deadline.
”There are serious differences on issues like the sharing of national [oil] wealth and the demand of self-determination from the Kurds,” Fadhal added.
The drafting of the Constitution, due to be put to a referendum in October, is a key phase in Iraq’s political transition, which the United States and its allies hope could pave the way to a pullout of foreign troops.
Shi’ite panellist Jawad al-Maliki said on Tuesday he was optimistic an agreement would be reached, but indicated a draft might be presented without all parties on board.
”We are not seeking 100% consensus — the most important thing is that the people of Iraq accept (the constitution) in a referendum.”
Five US soldiers were killed across Iraq in a series of incidents this week, the US military said, taking to about 1 850 the total American military casualties since the March 2003 invasion, according to Pentagon figures.
In northern Iraq, six Iraqi soldiers assigned to protect oil pipelines were killed on Wednesday as masked gunmen ambushed their patrol vehicle and opened fire, Kirkuk police said.
And a British newspaper reported that the number of dead Iraqi civilians counted at the Baghdad morgue hit 1 100 in July, the highest toll in recent history.
On a trip to Paraguay, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld kept up the pressure on Iran, saying US forces have found Iranian weapons inside Iraq on more than one occasion over the past couple of months. — AFP
