An indefinite curfew was imposed on Baghdad on Thursday night and its international airport closed after the city was convulsed by the deadliest sectarian violence since the United States led war began in March 2003.
Suspected Sunni-Arab militants launched a salvo of five car bombs and two mortar rounds on one of the capital’s poorest neighbourhoods, the densely populated Shia slum of Sadr City.
The car bomb and mortars exploded in rapid succession leaving carnage in their wake in three street markets. At least 160 people were killed and over 257 injured.
Shia militias responded immediately by launching 10 mortar rounds on Baghdad’s main Sunni mosque, the Abu Hanifa mosque, blowing a hole in the dome, killing one person and wounding 14 others. Rounds were also fired at the headquarters of the country’s top Sunni organisation, the Association of Muslim Scholars, which has close contacts with the insurgents.
The leaders of Iraq’s three main communities stood shoulder to shoulder on national television to appeal for calm. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, was grim-faced as he and his Sunni and Shia vice-presidents pleaded for unity and self-restraint. The coordinated attack was the deadliest in Iraq since the invasion, surpassing a bombing in the southern city of Hillah, that targeted Shia police and National Guard, killing 125 and wounding more than 140 in February 2004.
The car bombs hit shoppers at pavement stalls in the district which is home to more than two million people. Iraqi TV showed appalling pictures of bloodied children lying in hospital corridors, and streets in Sadr City littered with body parts.
As ambulances rushed to the burning stalls, angry residents and Shia gunmen poured into the streets, firing their weapons and vowing revenge.
Before the Sadr City bombings, an unidentified group of about 30 fighters attacked Iraq’s health ministry in Baghdad, firing mortars and machine guns and forcing hundreds of terrified staff to take cover for up to three hours.
On Monday the Deputy Health Minister, Hakim al-Zamily survived an assassination attempt when gunmen attacked his convoy and killed two of his bodyguards. – Guardian Unlimited Â