Two car bombs turned a Baghdad bus station into a slaughterhouse on Wednesday and a third bomb ambushed emergency services, killing at least 38 people and wounding dozens.
The coordinated strikes during the morning rush hour shattered a relative lull in the violence and were intended to maximise sectarian tension as politicians resumed talks on a draft Constitution.
The first bomb exploded just before 8am local time outside the Nahda bus station, a main transit point in central Baghdad, followed minutes later by an explosion at an open-air depot filled with coaches, minibuses and taxis.
More than a dozen vehicles were incinerated. Survivors scrambled through the smouldering wreckage, some trying to flee, others seeking friends and relatives. The station serviced southern cities such as Najaf and Basra, and most passengers were Shia.
The third bomb detonated 15 minutes later between the depot and the nearby Kindi hospital as medics and police ferried the wounded to treatment, a familiar tactic by the insurgents, which spreads terror and panic.
There were more than 43 dead and 88 wounded, said an interior ministry official. ”The casualty figure could rise as there are charred bodies all over the place.”
A United States military spokesperson said that 38 died, including six police.
Four suspects were detained for what was the bloodiest attack since mid-July. The US military said a suicide bomber was in one of the three cars, but Iraqi police said all the bombs appeared to have been detonated by remote control. If so, the atrocity displayed electronic sophistication. It also confirmed intelligence reports that the insurgents were restricting suicide bombings because they were short of volunteers.
The Sunni Arab rebellion aims to demoralise Iraq’s majority Shias by showing that the government they elected in January cannot guarantee security. Some extremist groups say the Shias are not just American collaborators but apostates from true Islam.
A roadside bomb was defused on Wednesday about 50m from the Imam Hussein shrine in the holy Shia city of Kerbala, according to a police spokesperson.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, six Iraqi soldiers were shot and killed when insurgents stopped their minibus.
The US military said one of its helicopter gunships was involved in a firefight with insurgents in Baghdad on Tuesday.
However witnesses said the helicopter wounded dozens of civilians after firing on labourers who were sleeping on a hotel rooftop.
Later a bomb exploded in the centre of Fallujah, a former stronghold of the insurgency, killing three people including two children. It detonated in the middle of civilians walking in the central Wahda Street and did not appear to be aimed against Iraqi or American soldiers.
The violence came as politicians resumed efforts to agree a draft Constitution by August 22, a tight deadline to bridge fundamental differences over federalism and the role of Islam in a new Iraqi state.
The Parliament extended the deadline by a week after talks failed earlier this week. Some negotiators said a document might be ready on Thursday, but others said the widening disputes between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds might require another extension.
Sectarian and ethnic divisions about the extent to which Iraq’s regions should have autonomy and control over oil and other resources remain at the heart of the dispute, negotiators said.
Saleh al-Mutlak, a negotiator from the Sunni minority that dominated the country under Saddam Hussein, said his group still opposed provisions that might give Islamist Shia control over the southern oilfields and allow the Kurds to expand their region’s boundaries to annex the north’s oil resources.
US diplomats are lobbying hard to have the draft finished on time and presented to the country in a referendum in October, paving the way for elections in December and a possible withdrawal of some American troops.
Iraq’s presidency on Wednesday opened the way for the first legal executions in Iraq since Saddam’s fall by signing death sentences for three men convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape.
The men, who were not named, were tried in a criminal court in Wasit province, about 160km south-east of Baghdad. The time and place of their hanging was not confirmed.
President Jalal Talabani opposes capital punishment and did not sign the document, but authorised Adel Abdel Mehdi, one of his two vice-presidents, to do so. The Cabinet approved the order last week.
Capital punishment, suspended by the Americans after the 2003 invasion, was reinstated last year by Ayad Allawi’s government. Another 13 capital cases are awaiting the presidency’s authorisation.
Amnesty International said the government was setting a bad example in a country ravaged by violence. Britain said it would lobby against the move.
However many Iraqis welcome the prospect of executions. Viewers to a television call-in show demanded death for those who bombed the bus station. – Guardian Unlimited Â