Bombs Hit Hub of Diplomacy in Baghdad
By ROD NORDLAND and RIYADH MOHAMMED
Published: April 4, 2010
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi capital echoed with explosions on Sunday as insurgents sought to exploit political uncertainties created by painstakingly slow talks on forming a new government, with three suicide car bombings at diplomatic targets killing dozens of people and other scattered attacks disrupting areas across Baghdad.
Karim Kadim/Associated Press
One of three car bomb attacks on Sunday struck near the Iranian Embassy in the Sahiya District, the Interior Ministry said.
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It was the third day in a row of violent attacks for which officials blamed the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
The furious drumbeat of attacks, at a delicate moment, was taken as a concerted attempt by insurgents to retake the initiative after years of retreat and to undermine confidence in Iraq’s security forces as the American-led forces proceed with their withdrawal of all combat troops from the country before September.
The attacks came during a political scramble to form coalitions after the March 7 parliamentary elections. No group is holding anything close to a majority, and the deal-making is expected to stretch on for months.
“The first message from those terrorists of Al Qaeda is that ‘We are still here in this country, and the proof is that we can still organize a serious operation all over the capital and the country,’ ” said Hadi al-Ameri, who was in charge of the security committee in the last Parliament and is the head of the Badr Organization, a Shiite political group that once was among the most feared armed militias.
In addition, he said, “whenever there is some political disagreement, they try to conduct terrorist operations so Iraqi politicians start accusing one another.”
Despite the violence, Iraq’s leaders seemed determined on Sunday to show they were committed to the political process, conducting high-level meetings throughout the day in the heaviest flurry of activity since results were announced on March 27. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, sat down with Ayad al-Samarrai, the Sunni speaker of Parliament; Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was reported to be in talks with the leader of the next largest Shiite political bloc, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, with another delegation of his going to Erbil to talk to Kurdish officials there.
The bombings on Sunday were the first coordinated suicide attacks in Baghdad since January, when three downtown hotels were bombed. But on Friday night, a massacre aimed directly at some of Al Qaeda’s most bitter enemies in Iraq caused widespread concern: Gunmen wearing what resembled American and Iraqi military uniforms killed 25 people, most of them members of the so-called Sunni Awakening security groups or belonging to the Iraqi security services, in a village south of Baghdad.
Sunday’s burst of attacks, in striking at the heart of the diplomatic districts in western Baghdad, seemed designed to take advantage of the public controversy over the roles of Iran and other countries in trying to influence the formation of a new government.
An official in the Interior Ministry said the three suicide bombers on Sunday struck at the Iranian Embassy in the Sahiya District, as well as the residences of the Egyptian chargé d’affaires and the German ambassador in Mansour District. Security officials said the bombings together had killed at least 30 people and wounded 242.
Separately, a police official in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad, on the eastern side of the city, said a fourth suicide bombing was attempted at the offices of the government’s embassy protective services, but policemen shot and wounded the driver of a minibus packed with a ton of explosives before he could detonate it.
The police official identified that suspect as a 17-year-old Iraqi named Ahmed Jassim and said the police believe Mr. Jassim, who was hospitalized with a leg wound, was on drugs at the time. Bomb disposal experts worked for several hours to disassemble his vehicle and defuse the explosives.
A fifth car bomb exploded while it was being assembled Sunday, according to a statement by the Baghdad Operations Command. The explosion killed two bombmakers and wounded a third.
At Yarmuk Hospital, which received 11 dead and 57 wounded, the emergency room floor was awash in blood as doctors worked on victims, who crowded the rooms and even corridors. Family members of those who died wailed outside.
In Mansour near the German ambassador’s house, residents said that there had been rumors warning of a car bombing a few days earlier, and that the Iraqi police had even reinforced their checkpoints in the heavily guarded area. “This should be a very safe place,” said Hathik Kubaa, a doctor who lives across the street.
Nonetheless, the car bomber was apparently able to talk his way through at least four security checkpoints without being searched. The explosion tossed 12-foot-tall sections of blast walls about 50 yards down the street and blasted birds out of the air. The nearest wall was covered in blood, and human bones lay on the ground near the charred chassis of an automobile, all that remained of the car bomb.
Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command, said the car bombers were also wearing explosive vests when they attacked. He speculated that the Mar Yosif Chaldean Catholic church in the Mansour area might have been one of the intended targets as well as the diplomatic quarters. No diplomats were killed, the authorities said.
A spokeswoman for the Chaldean church, Ann Sami Matloub, said the church was packed with Easter worshipers at the time but was not damaged by the blast. She said that the explosion was so close that services had to be suspended briefly until parishioners could compose themselves.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings. But Abdul Kareem al-Thirib, head of the security committee in Baghdad’s provincial government, blame Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. “They are trying to show that the situation is bad,” he said. “This is a campaign launched by terrorists against innocent civilians to create chaos, but the security forces are totally in control of the situation.”
General Atta was critical of local news coverage of the bombings. “Some of the media had information even before we did, which means they had connections with the terrorists,” he asserted during an interview on state-owned Iraqiya television.
A news release from the Baghdad Operations Command, which is in charge of security in the capital, said the other explosions on Sunday morning included four improvised explosive devices in scattered locations, which killed no one.
Without giving details, the command said it had arrested those responsible for launching a series of rockets into the Green Zone on Saturday night.
Two so-called sticky bombs, placed on the underside of automobiles in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, wounded two people. Two mortar shells were also fired into the Green Zone on Sunday, the interior official said, without giving details of casualties.
The violence was not limited to the capital: at least six other attacks were reported Sunday in Hilla, Mosul and the Baquba area, with at least four dead and 30 wounded.
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