Death toll hits 98 after Iraq fuel truck attack

Last Update: Sunday, July 17, 2005. 8:46pm (AEST)

Stricken townspeople swept away the wreckage of a fuel truck bomb that killed 98 people south of Baghdad as three more suicide car bombers struck the Iraqi capital on Sunday in a relentless new campaign.

The overnight attack, which devastated the highway town of Musayyib, was the deadliest since the new Iraqi government took power in April and the highest death toll from a single car bomb since 125 people were killed in February in Hilla, also south of Baghdad.

Saturday's bombing prompted denunciations of the authorities in parliament and calls for local militia to take up arms.

Some 15 suicide bombers have struck within just over 48 hours in the capital and along the highway heading south in what Al Qaeda's Iraq wing has declared is a new campaign to seize control of Baghdad.

By far the worst incident was the blast near a Shiite mosque, which caused devastation in the mixed Sunni and Shiite town, in the centre of a violent area dubbed by US forces the "triangle of death".

A suicide bomber blew up a fuel truck near a crowded vegetable market outside the mosque. In addition to the 98 killed, hospital sources said 75 wounded were being treated, including 19 in a serious condition.

"This is a black day in the history of the town," Musayyib police chief Yas Khudayr said. On Sunday, angry crowds railed against the authorities outside buildings gutted by flame, while bulldozers swept aside the burnt-out wreckage of cars.

At a tense session in parliament, politicians assailed the government for failing to maintain security and called for local militia to be formed to replace failed police and soldiers.

"The plans of the interior and defence ministries to impose security in Iraq have failed to stop the terrorists. We need to bring back popular militias," senior parliamentarian Khudair al-Khuzai told the chamber.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has urged hundreds of suicide bombers from across the Arab world to come to Iraq to wage holy war, has claimed responsibility for the latest bombing campaign and said more violence would follow, although it did not explicitly claim the Musayyib attack.

"The operation is continuing as planned and we warn the enemies of God of more to come. We ask our Muslim brothers around the world to pray for God to grant us victory," said an Al Qaeda Internet statement on Saturday.

Three bombs

Sunday began with three more suicide car bombs in the capital, police sources said.

One attack, at a police checkpoint in the east of the city, killed three and wounded 14. The second, at a checkpoint in the south, killed one and wounded three. The third, near the former election commission headquarters, killed three and wounded two.

Al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for two attacks by late morning.

Iraq has often experienced several suicide attacks per day since the government took power in April. But US generals have said the situation was improving, with just six suicide car bombs countrywide last week, the fewest in nearly three months.

The sudden upsurge began on Friday, when 11 suicide car bombers struck US and Iraqi military targets throughout the capital and on the highway heading south.

Those attacks killed more than 32 people and wounded more than 100. On Saturday, apart from the Musayyib blast, strikes throughout Iraq killed at least 16 people, including three British soldiers in Amara in the south and one American soldier near Kirkuk in the north.

In Baghdad, tense Iraqi police officers - frequently the target of suicide bombers - have manned extra police checkpoints throughout the capital.

Friday's and Saturday's bombings followed a thwarted triple suicide attack at a gate to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone government compound on Thursday. A suicide car bomb on Wednesday near a US patrol killed 27 people, mostly children.

The US military has described the bombers as akin to "precision-guided" weapons and has made tackling them, and tracking down where the bombs are made, a top priority.

-Reuters

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1416062.htm