Two car bombs tore through a busy shopping area of a mainly Shi’ite district of Baghdad on Sunday, killing 56 people and wounding scores as militants defied a military offensive by U.S. and Iraqi troops.
The blasts came just two days after Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki trumpeted what he called the ”brilliant success” of Operation Imposing Law in quelling sectarian violence that has turned the capital’s streets into killing fields.
But United State generals, mindful of a similar crackdown last summer that failed, have been more cautious and warned any downturn in violence might be temporary as militants adapt their tactics to meet the new strategy.
In the worst attack on Sunday, a twin car bombing in a packed market area of New Baghdad, a mainly Shi’ite district in the eastern part of the capital, killed at least 55 people and wounded 128, police said.
A Reuters photographer, Carlos Barria, who is embedded with a US military unit that was in the area, reported seeing seven or eight bodies lying in the street after the two blasts, which he said were about 10 seconds and 100m apart.
”I saw a man about 50 years old. He was carrying a dead boy who looked about 10. He was holding him by one arm and one leg and screaming,” he said.
A man wearing a business suit lay dead next to a black Mercedes, a piece of shrapnel sticking out of his head. One of the explosions partially collapsed a two-storey building.
Fifteen minutes earlier, a joint patrol of United States. and Iraqi police had stopped to pose for pictures with each other on the street corner where the first bomb exploded.
One policeman was killed when a car bomb exploded near a police checkpoint in Sadr City, a stronghold of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia blamed by Sunni Arabi leaders for many hit squad killings.
There had been a relative lull in sectarian attacks since Operation Imposing Law, seen as a last-ditch attempt to avert all-out civil war between majority Shi’ites and minority Sunnis, was formally launched on Wednesday.
Earlier on Sunday, police had reported finding just five bodies shot, tortured and dumped in Baghdad on Saturday, a dramatic drop from the 40-50 they typically report each day.
It was one of the lowest tolls since the bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra a year ago unleashed a wave of sectarian violence that has caused tens of thousands of deaths.
The United States has repeatedly said there is no military solution to Iraq’s violence and that any let-up in the bloodletting must be accompanied by political progress to reconcile Iraq’s warring communities. President George Bush has said he is holding the government to certain benchmarks.
On Saturday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Iraq’s leaders to use the lull in violence to push ahead with national reconciliation.
”They are off to a good start,” said Rice, referring to Operation Imposing Law. ”How the Iraqis use the breathing space that might provide is what is really important.”
Establishing a law that equitably distributes revenues from Iraq’s vast oil wealth is seen as a key step in achieving reconciliation between factions.
Britain, US ‘not responsbile’ for violence
British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday rejected suggestions he should bear responsibility for the sectarian violence in Iraq but said Britain and the US had a duty to bring it to an end.
”Of course I am devastated by the numbers of people who have died in Iraq, but it’s not British and American troops who are killing them,” he told BBC television in an interview.
”They are being killed by people who are deliberately using terrorism to try to stop the country getting on its feet. It’s not a question of being culpable. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to put the situation right.
”We have absolute responsibility to put things right. What I completely dispute is that the reason Iraq has got the difficulties it has … is simply because of issues to do with planning before the war.”
The United Nations said in January that at least 34 452 Iraqis died across the country and another 3 ‘685 were wounded in 2006.
A total of 132 British troops have died since the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003 while there have been 3 127 US military fatalities in the same period, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on Pentagon figures.
Meanwhile, Blair was silent over claims in Sunday’s News of the World newspaper that Britain was preparing to cut by half its 7 000-strong contingent in Iraq in May as it hands over the southern province of Basra to the Iraqis.
But another report, in the Independent on Sunday, said British government plans to withdraw 1 000 troops by April would be postponed as the United States sent an additional 21 500 troops to Iraq in a bid to curb the blood-letting.
”Let’s just wait and see,” he said when asked whether the News of the World report was true.
”As the Iraqis are more capable down in Basra of taking control of their own security, we will scale down.
”But you’ve got to make sure you have sufficient forces in support and in reserve to be able to help the Iraqis if a particular problem arises.”
Blair said Washington was not pressurising London to maintain its troop levels and recognised that the security situation was different in British-run Basra than in Baghdad. – Sapa-AFP, Reuters