Baghdad car bombs kill at least 136

Source: times online

(Sabah Arar/AFP/Getty Images)

Two blasts rocked central Baghdad, including this one near the Justice Ministry

Twin car bombings in central Baghdad killed at least 136 people today in what looks like the start to a blood-drenched election campaign.

The attacks - the deadliest in two years - occurred along a road thronged with traffic and destroyed three government buildings, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Public Works and the Baghdad governor's office, where ten members of parliament were attending a meeting.
The bombs exploded within two minutes of each other at around 10:30 in the morning, First came a smaller bomb outside the Baghdad governorate, driving pedestrians north along Haifa street towards a ministerial complex 500 metres away, where the second and larger bomb went off.
Hospitals overflowed with more than 600 wounded and columns of brown smoke hung over the city for hours. Haifa Street, which runs north from the fortified Green Zone, was flooded several feet deep with water from burst mains. The water turned red in places with the blood of the dead and injured.

 

"Where were the security forces?" screamed Mohammed Radhi, who was searching for his sister, a ministry employee.
The attack was most likely carried out by Sunni extremists, linked to al-Qaeda or the former regime of Saddam Hussein, who are trying to undermine the current government. Iraqis are meant to elect a new parliament on January 16 but a row over election rules could cause a delay.
Many Iraqis saw today's twin attack as a blatantly political act. "It's about the election," said Salman, a Kurdish man looking for a car left behind by his injured brother. "It's a way of influencing politics."
Violence had been decreasing for the last two years but remnants of an insurgency remain alive and continue to kill about 300 Iraqis every month. The run-up to the election may coincide with a new upsurge in violence, US military commanders warned in recent weeks. An attack on August 19 destroyed the foreign and finance ministries.
"I was there that day but this is bigger," said Ahmed Ali, a 19-year veteran of the Baghdad civil defence force.
Today's bombs blew out the windows on several office towers and ripped deep craters into road surfaces. A family of seven lay incinerated in their car, surrounded by dozens of other charred wrecks. Police workers carried human bodies parts away in brown canvas bags as an American forensics team examined the blast area. Six years after the start of the insurgency, Iraq still has almost no forensics experts.
"How could the bombers get through all the government checkpoints," said Umm Ali, a woman arriving at the scene. "Somebody from inside must have helped them." As she spoke a man walked past with a white foam tray holding a set of fleshy dentures ripped from a skull. Nearby, the fittings on a traffic light mast hung from long wires, swinging in the wind like a condemned man.
The main blast set the top four floors of the Ministry of Public Works on fire, trapping several employees far out of reach of rescue workers. They said many dead bodies recovered later were so hot they could only be moved after being covered with blankets.
At the Ministry of Justice the bomb not only shattered the windows but ripped out all the window frames along an entire city block. Police have given no estimate of the size of the bombs but they appear to have weighed at least a few tons.
All three government buildings had been protected with 12-feet concrete blast walls but the explosions swept them away. Parked cars that caught fire partly melted into the road surface.
One man, however, owes his freedom to the bombs. He had been kidnapped and bundled into the boot of a car minutes earlier. The driver was injured by the first blast on Haifa Street and two accomplices were killed. "He kicked the inside several times before we opened the boot," said a police officer. "We managed to free him from the kidnapping."