At least 87 people were killed in Baghdad on Wednesday as 10 suicide bombings left a trail of carnage after Iraqi leaders finally completed a draft constitution in a new milestone in the political transition.
United States and Iraqi officials said nearly 200 people were also wounded in the bombings which militants loyal to al-Qaeda’s Iraq frontman said were in revenge for a massive US-backed assault on Sunni insurgents in the northern town of Tal Afar.
The deadliest attack, which accounted for 80 of the fatalities, struck in the Shiite district of Kadhimiyah, as day labourers gathered in the early morning waiting to be hired.
”There were dozens and dozens of people around the car when it blew up,” said Satah Jihad, a 40-year-old shopkeeper.
”I’m packing and going straight home,” said a visibly-shaken Ali Kamel, who had only arrived in the capital from the central city of Kut three days earlier to look for work.
”I saw dozens of bodies on the ground and dozens of injured people screaming,” he said.
The carnage was repeated across Baghdad through the morning rush hour and into the early afternoon as nine more suicide bombers struck, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 30, including three US soldiers.
It was the biggest wave of of suicide bombings in Baghdad since April 29 when a dozen cars were blown up in and around the capital killing more than 30 people and wounding more than 100.
British Defence Secretary John Reid vowed that the bombers would not succeed in their goal of derailing Iraq’s political transition.
”The terrorists won’t win,” he said on the sidelines of a Nato defence ministers’ meeting in Berlin. ”The Iraqi people will win.”
In other violence, 17 Shi’ite civilians were rounded up before dawn in the confessionally mixed town of Taji, just north of Baghdad, and executed in a main square.
”Armed men dressed as soldiers and driving aboard military vehicles arrived in Taji and arrested several members of the Bani Tamin tribe before assembling them on a public square and shooting them,” an interior ministry official said.
Shi’ite civilians have been increasingly targeted by Sunni insurgents as hardliners within the ousted elite vent their anger against the long oppressed majority that now leads the government.
Iraqi leaders announced that they had finally handed over the text of a draft Consitution to the United Nations on Wednesday, ending months of tortuous negotiations.
The deputy speaker of Parliament, Hussein Shahristani, said some minor changes had been made to the wording of the text presented to Parliament on August 28 in a bid to meet Sunni objections.
The changes concerned references in the charter to the national identity of Iraq, as well as articles connected with the management of water resources and the rights of the prime minister, who will have two rather than three deputies.
But a leading Sunni group, the National Council for Dialogue, rejected the concessions and called on the disgruntled minority to reject the text in a referendum due next month.
The Sunnis could still torpedo the draft if enough of them vote against it. The rules for the poll stipulate that the Constitution fails if two-thirds of the voters reject it in any three provinces and at least three are predominantly Sunni Arab.
The announcement of the final draft came one day after the Iraqi president met Bush in Washington.
The draft Constitution is ”an historic milestone”, Bush said.
”Iraqi people can be proud of the draft constitution and when an election to ratify the constitution is held next month, they’ll have a chance to vote their conscience at the polls.”
In northern Iraq, where some 10 000 US and Iraqi troops have been engaged in a massive offensive to recapture the ethnically divided town of Tal Afar from Sunni insurgents, commanders spoke of the ”horrible” abuses they had uncovered.
”The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine, in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child’s body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents,” said Colonel HR McMaster.
He said there had also been beheadings.
Commanders said Tuesday that they were in full control of the town after the insurgents melted away.
In an internet statement, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda organization in the Land of Two Rivers claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings in Baghdad, saying they were in revenge for the assault on Tal Afar.
”The conquest of revenge for the Sunni people of Tal Afar has started,” said the statement, the authenticity of which could not be verified.
The Iraqi Red Crescent said up to 7 000 families had fled Sunni neighbourhoods of Tal Afar that bore the brunt of the US-backed offensive. – AFP
