Violence Increases Despite the New Baghdad Security Plan

Mar 29, 06:50 PM

Current Headlines: BAGHDAD, Iraq _ At least 76 people died Thursday in Baghdad in a series of bombings, mortar attacks and gunfights that marked one of the deadliest days since a new Baghdad security plan went into effect six weeks ago.

The death toll throughout Iraq was more than 123, an indication that despite initial signs of a downturn, violence is returning to previous levels throughout the country.

The number of unidentified bodies found dumped on Baghdad streets, which had dropped to an average of 13 per day in the weeks just after the plan began, has averaged 19 a day for the past two weeks.

The average numbers of people killed and of car bombs also have increased slightly, according to statistics that McClatchy compiled.

The biggest attack came Thursday evening at Baghdad's popular Shalal market as families were preparing for their Friday day off.

The market, which recently had been turned into a pedestrians-only mall as a precaution against car bombs, was packed with shoppers when a bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated himself near a shop that sells tapes and CDs featuring Shiite Muslim religious chants. The blast shattered storefronts, killing at least 60 and wounding 40, police said.

Shalal Ahsan Hussein, 43, had accompanied his brother-in-law to get a haircut. The power of the explosion threw them to the ground, but the crowd around them shielded them from shrapnel, Hussein said. He said the market was filled with dismembered bodies, men searching for their wives, women searching for their children.

In recent weeks, the U.S. military and Iraqi officials have said marketplaces are safer because they've been cordoned off from vehicles, but Thursday's attack _ at least the fifth attempt on the shopping district and the worst so far _ showed the limitation of those measures.

The other Baghdad deaths came in a variety of incidents, including a car bombing that killed two policemen, an attack on a mosque that killed two civilians and a car bombing that killed four people near a hospital.

Bombs also devastated areas outside Baghdad. In the town of Khalis, about 12 miles northeast of Baghdad, three car bombings killed at least 47 people and injured 91, according to a doctor at Khalis General Hospital.

One car bomb struck a joint police and army patrol in the city's center. Minutes later another exploded at a bus station. The third vehicle was an ambulance that exploded near an Iraqi army headquarters. The driver had asked the soldiers for help after pretending that the vehicle had broken, an Iraqi soldier said.

The town has been a sectarian fault line in the bloody province of Diyala, where the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella Sunni Muslim insurgent group dominated by al-Qaida, has been struggling for control. On Wednesday, 17 Shiite and Kurdish families were forced out of the city, and a battle between Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents rages.

Food rations haven't reached much of Diyala province in months, residents said.

Samir Jawad, 35, said he'd gone to Khalis to get food rations, which hadn't been supplied in six months. As he walked to the bus station with his wife, he felt the waves of the explosion and saw a ball of fire before fainting, he said when reached by phone.

His wife sobbed at the hospital.

"I saw tens of victims with my own eyes," she said. "This is a disaster."

Doctors complained that they couldn't absorb the tens of wounded, and many died on the road to Baghdad.

After the bombings, gunmen attacked Iraqi police and army checkpoints.

In Mosul, the police chief, Gen. Wafiq Mohammed Abd al-Qader, said that 17 men, including some police officers, had been detained in connection with the reprisal killings Wednesday of at least 60 Sunnis in the town of Tal Afar. The Sunnis were killed after a truck and car bomb attack Tuesday that killed at least 80 people, for which the Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility.

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(McClatchy Newspapers special correspondents Ali Abd al-Saytar in Baqouba and Laith Hammoudi and Jinan Hussein in Baghdad contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2007, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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