Six car bombs killed at least 133 people in a Shi’ite stronghold in Baghdad on Thursday, one of the bloodiest attacks since the United States invasion and likely to inflame sectarian passions in a nation sliding towards civil war.
A further 201 people were wounded, police said, and the Health Minister said the toll could rise. ”Many of the dead have been reduced to scattered body parts and are not counted yet,” Ali al-Shemari told Reuters.
The Iraqi government also imposed an indefinite curfew in Baghdad on Thursday.
The blasts, which were followed by a mortar barrage aimed at a nearby Sunni enclave, came at the same time as gunmen mounted a bold daylight raid on the Shi’ite-run Health Ministry.
Six parked vehicles, each packed with as much as half a tonne of explosives, devastated streets and a crowded market in the sprawling Sadr City slum in east Baghdad, Major General Jihad al-Jabori of the Interior Ministry told state television.
Mortars also landed nearby and residents seized a seventh car they said was driven by a would-be suicide bomber, he added.
Bloodied remains lay amid mangled vehicle wrecks. Fierce fires were left blazing after the attacks.
The violence may heighten sectarian anger after a week of tension inside the US-backed national-unity government. Washington is pressing Shi’ite and minority Sunni leaders to rein in militants to halt a slide towards all-out civil war.
Five people were also wounded at the Health Ministry, about 5km from Sadr City, an Interior Ministry source said, when about 30 guerrillas fired mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns into the compound in one of the biggest public shows of force by militants in the city since the 2003 United States invasion.
A United Nations report released on Wednesday said Iraq’s civilian death toll hit a high in October of 120 a day.
A deputy health minister accused the Iraqi army of failing to respond to his calls for help at the Health Ministry. It took the arrival of US helicopters and ground troops to disperse the attackers, one ministry employee told Reuters after surviving the assault.
During the raid, Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily spoke by telephone to Reuters, his voice edged with emotion: ”Terrorists are attacking the building with mortars, machine guns and we can even see snipers. Any employee who leaves the building will be killed.”
An Interior Ministry source said gunmen had surrounded the ministry, north of central Baghdad on the mainly Shi’ite eastern bank of the Tigris, and clashed with Iraqi forces. Three mortar rounds landed in the ministry compound, he said.
The source said the gunmen had attempted to break into the ministry compound but had been driven back.
”Everybody inside was panicking. Most of the employees were women and they were screaming and crying,” said male ministry employee Kadhem al-Saadi.
Controversy
While the US says many police and army units are suspected of being loyal to Shi’ite groups, some, particularly in the army, are believed to have links to Sunni leaders.
The Health Ministry, controlled by Shi’ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, is at the centre of controversy.
Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia, which has its Baghdad stronghold in the nearby Sadr City slum, is accused by the once dominant Sunni minority of some of the worst death-squad killings, in which hundreds of people a week are dying in Baghdad.
The health minister flatly denied the UN report which said a record 3 700 civilians died in violence in October. The real figure was about a quarter of that, Ali al-Shimeri said — an account at odds with data from other sources and with recent statistics from the ministry itself.
Sectarian passions have flared this month, notably over attacks and kidnaps by men in uniform. Dozens of civil servants were abducted last week from the Sunni-run Higher Education Ministry by suspected Shi’ite militiamen from Sadr City.
Shi’ite leaders denied assertions by the Sunni minister that more than 60 of his staff and visitors were still missing.
Zamily said the health ministry was often attacked but Thursday’s raid was unusually sustained, with militants apparently trying to forge a safe corridor to link the Sunni enclave of Adhamiya in east Baghdad to the mainly Sunni west bank of the river:
”We called the army commanders to intervene and stop the gunmen from attacking us but we got no reply. There is a big conspiracy by terrorists to separate east and west Baghdad.”
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, due to meet US President George Bush in Jordan, has vowed to disband militias loyal to fellow Shi’ite leaders like Sadr, a key ally, but he has resisted pressure from some in Washington to speed that up. — Reuters