At least 120 people, including five United States soldiers, were killed in bomb attacks across Iraq on Thursday, fuelling sectarian tensions as the country waits to form a new government.
In Iraq’s bloodiest day for months, twin suicide bombers struck the restive Sunni city of Ramadi and the Shi’ite holy city of Karbala, while a roadside bomb hit a US military patrol.
More that 200 people were also wounded in the onslaught, which politicians said was meant to impede the setting up a government of national unity in the wake of elections to establish the first long-term Parliament since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
”It’s an odious crime which shows the savagery and sectarianism of these criminals,” said Jawad al-Maliki, a top leader from Shi’ite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari’s Dawa party, speaking of the attack in Karbala, one of Iraq’s holiest cities, 110km south of Baghdad.
”They are trying to change the results through terror,” he said in a veiled reference to complaints by Sunni-based parties of ballot-rigging in the poll.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said the bombings will not affect attempts to put together a government of national unity.
”Those who think such terrorist attacks will influence the political play are wrong,” he said.
In the deadliest attack, a suicide bomber wired with explosives killed at least 67 people and injured more than 100 when he blew himself up outside a police recruitment centre in the western city of Ramadi, hospital officials said.
Less than an hour earlier, another suicide bomber detonated his charge in the middle of a busy market area in Karbala next to the Iman Hussein shrine, killing at least 44, mainly vendors and pilgrims, and wounding 85 others.
Ambulances rushed to ferry away the dead and wounded in an all-too-familiar scene of carnage. A number of Iranian pilgrims were among the victims, hospital officials said.
Karbala has been relatively quiet for the past year, but the peace was shattered on Wednesday when a car bomb exploded in the city, wounding two people.
Adding to Thursday’s mayhem, five US soldiers died when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle while on patrol south of Karbala, the US military said.
The patrol was not involved in rescue work in Karbala, it added.
The latest casualties took the death toll for the US military personnel in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to at least 2 186, according to an Agence France-Presse toll based on figures from the Pentagon.
Three car bombs — two of them driven by suicide bombers — also exploded in Baghdad, but only left one police officer and two Iraqi soldiers injured.
In other violence, four police officers were killed and four wounded when rebels attacked two patrols with small-arms fire just outside Baquba, 60km north-west of Baghdad.
The spike in unrest came as Iraq awaited the final results of elections on December 15 after the electoral commission earlier indicated that Shi’ite-based religious parties and their Kurdish allies would be returned to power.
US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair want Iraq to form a new government as quickly as possible.
They believe this would improve security and stability on the ground and ultimately enable them to start withdrawing their troops later this year.
Abdul Hussein al-Hindawi, a member of the Iraqi electoral commission, said a complete list of preliminary election results will be announced by Monday.
But he said it will take up to another fortnight before the results are fully certified with all the names of the new MPs.
As for the work of independent foreign monitors sent to Iraq to review the election, it will continue separately to the commission’s timetable.
The International Mission for Iraqi Elections is due to publish its findings of a review into the complaints within three weeks, but Hindawi said there is ”no need” for the commission to wait until then before making its announcement.
But a spokesperson for a group of 50 parties and personalities that have complained of election fraud said any announcement by the commission before the independent monitors finish their work would be illegal and irrational.
”We are against all announcements of the final, uncertified results before the experts finish their work, in order to safeguard the legality of the process,” said Ali al-Tamini, a spokesperson for the so-called Maram group.
He said any election-related release beforehand ”would consolidate our doubt about the honesty of the commission”. — Sapa-AFP