At least six people were killed, including a woman and two children, and 40 hurt when two suicide bombers blew up their cars on Friday outside a Baghdad hotel and near an interior ministry complex.
The explosions, at about 8.20am local time, brought down the facade of a three-storey residential building, and sent slabs of concrete flying, wounding many people as they slept in on this Muslim holy day.
Two Turks and one Sudanese were reported to be among those hurt, hospital officials said.
The attack took place in southern Baghdad’s Jadriyah district outside the Hamra hotel, one of several housing foreign journalists, and near the complex where United States soldiers on Sunday discovered a number of Iraqi prisoners who had suffered abuse.
It was not immediately clear what the target was.
Firemen and soldiers, assisted by local people, scrambled through the rubble, searching for survivors. A crater in the street quickly filled with water from ruptured pipes.
Witnesses said a first car, which drove down a side street behind the interior ministry prison, exploded against a concrete barrier protecting the Hamra hotel. A second car then tried to penetrate further, but blew up at the same place.
On October 24, in a similar attack, triple car bombs rocked the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, used by foreign journalists and contractors in the centre of the capital, killing 17.
There was no immediate reports of damage at the nearby interior ministry complex. It had housed about 170 detainees, mostly Sunnis, before they were taken away by US soldiers who said they were in need of food, water and medical attention after some had been abused.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has ordered an investigation into alleged torture at the facility.
Other violence
Elsewhere in the country, four civilians were wounded, one seriously, when a car bomb exploded on Friday morning near a convoy of 4×4 vehicles in Kanaan, near Baquba, north-west of Baghdad, police said.
And the US military reported the death on Thursday of a US soldier in a road crash near the north-western Iraqi town of Tal Afar, the 13th American serviceman to die in the country over a three-day period.
At least 2 083 US military personnel have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally.
The US military believes the level of violence will increase in the run-up to the December 15 general election, at a time when military analysts suggest about 3 000 foreigners are now fighting alongside home-grown insurgents.
“This level of chaos and violence is going to increase, almost in spite of what we do, between now and the election,” according to a senior US commander in Iraq, interviewed before the latest attacks.
Violence is likely to increase because of the ongoing political struggle in the run-up to the elections, with some groups taking part in the political process while fighting at the same time, the senior officer said.
In Washington, a US military analyst, citing a study drawing on Saudi and other regional intelligence, suggested that as many as 3 000 foreigners are involved in the insurgency.
Algerians constitute the highest percentage of the foreign fighters, about 20%. They are followed by Syrians, Yemenis, Sudanese, Egyptians and Saudis, said Anthony Cordesman, an expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
“If there are anything like 3 000 foreign fighters in Iraq, this poses a serious threat,” Cordesman said.
But “the exact numbers are largely irrelevant. All it takes is enough volunteers to continue to support suicide attacks and violent bombings, and to seek to drive Iraqi Sunnis towards a major and intense civil war,” Cordesman said.
In Washington, meanwhile, Democrats and the White House traded fresh salvos over US Iraq policy on Thursday, as a top Democratic lawmaker, Representative John Murtha, introduced a Bill demanding an immediate withdrawal of US troops there.
The veteran US lawmaker said the US military operation in Iraq is a lost cause.
“Our military has done everything that has been asked of them; the US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily,” said Murtha, a Vietnam War veteran considered more hawkish than most members of his party.
“It’s time to bring them home,” Murtha said. — AFP