Car bombs kill at least 79 in Iraq

BAGHDAD -- The near simultaneous explosions of two powerful car bombs devastated a crowded street bazaar in central Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 79 people, wounding more than 140, and showering the pavement with shards of metal, tattered vending carts, and bloodied human remains.

The midday attack at the Bab al-Sherji market was the second mass-casualty bombing in Baghdad in a week and the deadliest of the year. The T-shirt vendors, DVD dealers, and fruit peddlers it targeted are primarily working-class Shi'ite Muslims, a sign that the Sunni Muslim insurgency remains capable of inflicting heavy losses even as Iraqi and US forces prepare to impose a security crackdown.

The attack came as Shi'ites celebrate Ashura, the 10-day religious holiday commemorating the death of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson in the seventh century.

The bombs exploded within seconds of each other around noon, a peak shopping time, and sent a dark mushroom of smoke high into the blue sky over Baghdad. Witnesses said a suicide attacker drove in with one of the bombs, veering his vehicle into a cluster of stands before blowing it up. A second car exploded about 150 yards to the northeast along the same street.

At the Baghdad market, a female customer had just asked fruit vendor Ali Khadhim for oranges, so he turned from his wooden trolley to fill her order when the bomb went off. The force of the blast launched him about 10 yards, he said, and by the time he recovered his bearings, the oranges lay scattered on the ground and the woman was gone.

"I couldn't hear for a while," said Khadhim, 42, as he stood on the fringes of the bombing scene, his neck wrapped in a white bandage, his shirt collar darkened by bloodstains. "I was looking at my body, my neck was bleeding, for a moment I asked myself, am I still alive?"

He found a human arm on the ground not far from him. "I looked at it. I looked at my arm. Thank God it was not my arm," he said.

The bombing produced the worst carnage since a Nov. 23 attack in the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City that killed more than 200 people. A bombing at a university in Baghdad Jan. 16 killed at least 65. Iraqi officials saw a connection with the earlier attacks and blamed Sunni insurgents and supporters of the former government of Saddam Hussein.

"One can say there is a pattern emerging, they are attacking the infrastructure of our society, one is the university, one is the marketplace, it is really very, very, worrying. And the government must take this very seriously," said Haider al Ebadi, a Shi'ite member of Parliament. He also worried about reprisals. "I hope this time is different, but this has happened before: Whenever there is indiscriminate killing, the Shi'ite militias react by killing Sunnis in similar numbers."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement condemning the attack and promising that "the security forces will pursue all those involved in this crime and bring them to justice."

The body count rose steadily throughout the day but officials did not settle on a specific number. An official at the Health Ministry who spoke on condition of anonymity said that 87 people were killed and 207 wounded in the market bombings. Brigadier General Kasim Salim of the Interior Ministry said 79 people died and 168 were injured.

The timing of the attacks -- a day after the arrival in Baghdad of 3,200 additional US troops intended to bolster the latest security crackdown -- prompted some Iraqi officials to speculate that the insurgents intended to force the Iraqi government into a hasty response.

The bombers "want to make the government start with their security plan before finishing all the preparations," said Hassan Soneid, a Shi'ite lawmaker, who promised that the government's security plan "will not allow things like this to happen."

In the shops and cloth-covered stalls near Tahrir Square, where vendors sell myriad discount goods, from camouflage military uniforms to CDs, secondhand clothes, electronics, tools, and video-game consoles, residents expressed less optimism about the government's ability to respond.

An Iraqi police officer who wore a black ski mask over his face and would not give his name cursed Maliki. "Only the poor people are dying and the killers on both sides are still alive," the officer said.

After the attack, shopkeepers picked through their scattered belongings. A bulldozer cleared the street while firefighters sprayed down the bloodied streets. Ahmed Hossein, 17, worked alongside them, using his wooden pushcart to ferry human body parts to waiting ambulances.

"I was putting in the heads and arms and legs that we found," he said. "But we couldn't match them. The pieces don't belong to one person."

"What did we do wrong?" he asked. "We voted for Maliki and this government. They have not given us anything and now they're taking our lives."

Hossam Hadi gripped a broom and swept the broken glass from the floor of his clothing shop. Above him, dislodged wires and cables swung down into the room. "People don't care if they are watching this from outside. They are not losing their people. We are paying the price," he said. "Americans are stupid and slow, they see Maliki make mistakes and Bush says: 'Give him a chance.' He wants to try him out. Of course the Bush family is not paying the price. He has time to try people out, we don't."

Elsewhere yesterday, a US soldier was killed and four others were wounded by a roadside bomb in Nineveh Province, northwest of Baghdad, the US military said in a statement. The soldiers belonged to Task Force Lightning assigned to the Fourth Brigade Combat Team, First Cavalry Division. The killings brought the three-day death toll for US service members to at least 28. Twelve of those occurred when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed Saturday in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad.

A Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic State of Iraq, said it shot down the Black Hawk, according to a statement posted on the Internet. The US military has not confirmed that the helicopter was shot down and a spokesman said yesterday that the crash was still under investigation.

In Khalis, a town north of Baqubah, a bomb exploded in a market, followed by three mortar explosions, in an attack that killed 12 people and wounded 29, according to Ali al Khayam, a spokesman for the Diyala Province police.