US efforts to subdue the insurgency in Baghdad suffered a setback yesterday when the Iraqi capital endured one of its most wretched days in four years of slaughter, with some 200 people killed and more than 200 injured in afternoon bomb attacks.
Some of the capital's poorest and most densely populated areas once again confronted scenes of carnage and devastation as at least five large explosions detonated within a terrifying few hours. In the worst attack, a car bomb at a market in a Shia district killed at least 140 people, some of them labourers rebuilding the marketplace from a previous attack in February.
The apparently co-ordinated onslaught, the deadliest in Baghdad since US president George Bush implemented his security surge two months ago, provided sobering punctuation to a declaration by Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, who announced Iraqi forces would assume control of security in every Iraqi province by the end of the year.
But Baghdad is a different matter. Mr Maliki has been under huge pressure from the anti-American Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a political ally, to commit to a timetable for US-led foreign troops to leave Iraq. But Mr Maliki insists a withdrawal must be linked to conditions on the ground. And yesterday's mayhem underlined the task facing Iraq's fledgling army and police force.
In the deadliest blast, a parked car bomb exploded among a crowd of workers at a market in the Sadriya district of central Baghdad, killing at least 140 people and wounding about 150.
One worker, Salih Mustafa (28), was waiting for a minibus home when the bomb went off. "I rushed with others to give a hand and help the victims," he said. "I saw three bodies in a wooden cart, and civilian cars were helping to transfer the victims. It was really a horrible scene."
Another witness said he saw dozens of dead bodies in the street and that more had been burned alive inside the minibuses and cars set alight by the blast. "There were pieces of flesh all over the place. Women were screaming and shouting for their loved ones who died," he said.
Sadriya is one of Baghdad's most commercially active districts, and is home to thousands of Shia Kurds. But it is also close to the Sunni stronghold of al-Fadhil, where insurgents have become increasingly active. Three weeks ago, a car full of gunmen sprayed machine-gun fire at market traders in Sadriya, killing three people, before being chased back into the al-Fadhil area.
An hour before the Sadriya attack, a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi police checkpoint at one of the main entrances to Sadr City, home to two million - mainly poor - Shia and a major support base for Mr Sadr and his Mahdi militia. At least 41 people were killed, including five Iraqi security officers, and 76 wounded. Many dead were drivers or passengers incinerated in the cars waiting to pass the checkpoint. A few hundred metres away was one of two main security stations in Sadr City, from which US and Iraqi forces are co-ordinating the security surge.
Another car bomb had exploded earlier near a hospital in the central neighbourhood of Karrada, killing 11 people and wounding 13. A fourth explosion was caused by a device left on a minibus in the central Rusafi area: four people died and six were wounded. A fifth suicide car bomb targeted a police patrol, killing two officers.
US defence secretary Robert Gates sought to characterise the attacks as a determined strategy by terrorists to undermine the security surge. "We have anticipated from the very beginning . . . the terrorists, al-Qaeda, the insurgency and others would attempt to increase the violence in order to make the plan a failure or to make the people of Iraq believe the plan is a failure," he said.
The crackdown was officially launched on February 14th and US and Iraqi officials have expressed cautious optimism about its initial results, stressing it would be months before its success could be judged. In nine weeks, the number of bodies found on the streets has declined, due in large part to the co-operation of Mr Sadr in reining in his gunmen, who were blamed for many of the death-squad killings that targeted Sunni Arabs.
But the truck, car and suicide bombs, which have hit mostly Shia civilian areas, have proved harder to stop. Amid growing anger among Shia communities, there are fears Mr Sadr, who ordered his six ministers from cabinet this week, will feel freer to return his militiamen to the streets under the guise of "protection". -(Guardian service)