Bombings and shootings killed up to 61 people in Iraq on Tuesday, including at least 26 soldiers, undermining the government’s attempts to show it can suppress unremitting violence.
A roadside bomb attack on a bus filled with Iraqi troops on a road between Tikrit and Baiji, north of Baghdad, killed at least 23, the army said.
A British soldier was killed in a mortar attack on an army base in the southern city of Basra, a British military spokesperson said.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a car targeted soldiers collecting their salaries from a bank, killing at least 10 people, including an elderly woman, police said. State television put the toll at 14.
The attack was in the same spot in the Karrada district where a car bomb and mortars killed at least 27 people last week.
”We should carry guns to protect ourselves. If we expect Iraqi security forces to protect us we will burn, just like those innocent people,” said kiosk owner Abu Fadhil, surveying charred bodies.
”The government is useless. Only days ago we suffered from a huge blast here. The interior minister has to admit they lost the war against the terrorists.”
A boy, about 12-years old, stood in the street sobbing and tearing his shirt after seeing his dead mother.
”My mother, my mother, my mother,” he screamed, as people held him back from reaching her corpse.
Familiar promises
Two months after being sworn in, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has yet to prove he can end such carnage and ease sectarian bloodshed which has raised fears of civil war.
He has presented a 24-point reconciliation plan that is long on promises and short on details, and imposed a security crackdown in Baghdad that has proven ineffective.
The charred remains of the 23 soldiers who were killed were scattered across their bus. Two skulls lay in the vehicle along an empty highway. A single army helmet lay on the ground.
The United States plans to boost its troop levels in Baghdad but long-term stability, and a US withdrawal, depends on the performance of Iraqi forces.
National Security Advisor Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said extra Iraqi brigades would also be brought to Baghdad.
”The fourth brigade will come on August 6 from Salaheddine province and it will be followed by other brigades,” he told a news conference.
A few hours after he spoke several mortar bombs landed at the fortified Green Zone government compound, police said.
Another kidnapping also served as a reminder of the challenges facing security forces.
The body of Adel al-Mansouri, a correspondent for al-Alam television station, was found dumped with bullet holes on a street, police and the station said.
Iraqi security forces were also targeted in the town of Muqdadiya, 90km north-east of the capital.
A car bomb exploded as a police patrol passed in front of a hospital, killing at least seven people and wounding eight, police said.
In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb killed two police and wounded a third as they conducted a patrol.
Iraq’s northern oil pipeline to Turkey was also hit by a sabotage attack, delaying the restart of exports vital for the battered economy, industry sources said. — Reuters