Attack kills 31 as US troops hand out toys at hospital

BAGHDAD -- A suicide attacker steered a car packed with explosives toward US soldiers giving away toys to children outside a hospital in central Iraq yesterday, killing at least 31 people. Almost all the victims were women and children, police said.

In all, 53 people were killed in bombings and by gunfire across the country, including two American soldiers who died in a roadside bomb near Baghdad. The US military also reported three American troops were killed in roadside bombings the previous day.

Amid the bloodshed, at least four insurgent groups reportedly were mulling a government offer to talk peace -- a hopeful sign for efforts to end an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives.

About 140,000 Americans celebrated US forces' third Thanksgiving in Iraq. In Baghdad, US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad praised the ''huge sacrifice" of American troops. Most of the soldiers got a traditional meal of turkey at dining halls, or on the hoods of Humvees before going on patrol.

Iraqi security officials said they believed Iraqi police or US forces were the target of the major bombing yesterday, which took place outside the general hospital in Mahmoudiya. The town has a mixed Shi'ite and Sunni Arab population and is in an area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death.

One Iraqi police officer was among the dead, said Captain Muthana Ahmad, a police spokesman in Babil Province. Four American troops participating in the toy giveaway were wounded, the Iraqis said.

''There was an explosion at the gate of the hospital," a woman with wounds on her face and legs said, sobbing. ''My children are gone. My brother is gone."

With no room left inside the hospital, emergency workers rushed victims to hospitals 20 miles north in Baghdad. With no room left in the hospital morgue, workers were forced to place the dead in the hospital garden so that relatives could find them.

Ahmad said late yesterday that an Iraqi parliament member, Jafar Muhammad, was among the dead. His death would bring to three the number of National Assembly members killed in insurgent attacks.

At least 2,103 US military personnel have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The count is four lower than the Defense Department's tally, which was last updated at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

More than 80 US service members have been killed in Iraq so far this month, one of the highest monthly tolls of the year.

In Baghdad yesterday, a spokesman for the interim government warned that violence, particularly against Iraqi soldiers and police, would probably accelerate ahead of the Dec. 15 elections to elect Iraq's first permanent postwar government. Officials issued similar warnings ahead of previous national votes.

''They are trying to challenge the state's authority and spread the impression that there is no state structure or authority in Iraq, to promote a sense of despair among citizens," said Laith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Kubba called the preelection attacks ''the last stand" of Muslim extremists and Saddam Hussein's ''criminals," predicting they would rapidly lose support after the establishment of a new government and a national reconciliation conference expected early next year.

Kubba also announced the discovery of arms caches in the northern city of Tal Afar. He said the find was surprising because US and Iraqi forces in recent months carried a third full-scale offensive there, leveling some neighborhoods.

The discovery ''means there are some terrorist cells still operating there" despite the US offensive, he noted.

The deaths reported yesterday included five people killed in a market in Hillah, an overwhelmingly Shi'ite town south of Baghdad.

''There were no police or army at the scene when the car exploded -- so all the casualties were Shi'ite civilians," said Ahmad, the police captain.

News agencies said the car exploded outside a soft-drink stand yesterday evening, the start of the weekend for Muslims, when many fathers take their families out for snacks and strolls.

Other violence included a close-range attack that killed three bodyguards of the country's industries minister in Baghdad, and a Baghdad ambush that killed four police officers.

Also yesterday, the US military denied reports from officials in far-western Iraq that US troops and insurgents were battling just inside Iraq along the Syrian border.

Private contractors at fortified American bases prepared feasts of turkey, lobster, and steak flown into the country on jumbo planes for the troops.

US military helicopters ferried US General George Casey from base to base, allowing the top US officer in Iraq to deliver Thanksgiving greetings and encouragement.

There was no immediate word yesterday on whether any senior US officials made a surprise visit to Iraq, as they have on previous holidays. Four governors -- Democrats Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Republicans Sonny Perdue of Georgia and Haley Barbour of Mississippi -- met with troops in Kuwait and are expected to travel to Iraq today.

President Bush, who showed up on Thanksgiving two years ago, telephoned service members in Iraq and Afghanistan from his ranch in Texas to send his greetings this year, US officials said.

Voters in the Dec. 15 election will select their first fully constitutional parliament since the ouster of Hussein in 2003.

More voters of the Sunni Arab minority, the backbone of the insurgency, are expected to vote this time, unlike the January balloting that many of them boycotted. Some Sunni insurgent groups have condemned the election and are expected to launch attacks to discourage a big turnout.

The United States hopes a large Sunni turnout will produce a broad-based government that can win the minority's trust, helping to take the steam out of the insurgency and hasten the day when American and other foreign troops can leave Iraq.

At a meeting last weekend in Egypt to pave the way for the reconciliation conference, Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, said he was willing to talk with insurgent groups if they agree to lay down their arms and renounce terrorism.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.