Baghdad: The bloodiest day

16 September 2005 10:19

Al-Qa'ida in new offensive. More than a dozen Baghdad attacks. 150 are killed and 540 injured. Iraq plunges towards civil war
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 15 September 2005

A suicide bomber sparked Baghdad's worst day of slaughter since the fall of Saddam 30 months ago when he lured labourers desperate for work towards his van by offering them jobs and then detonated explosives that killed 114 and injured 156 of them.

On a day when more than a dozen co-ordinated attacks thundered across Baghdad from dawn into the late afternoon - claiming 152 lives and wounding 542 - al-Qa'ida in Iraq said it was retaliating against a US-Iraqi operation directed at the insurgents' northern stronghold of Tal Afar. And as the hours passed with car and roadside bombs shattering the relative calm of the past few days, fears of civil war intensified.

A posting on the internet by al-Qa'ida in Iraq said: "To the nation of Islam, we give you the good news that the battles of revenge for the Sunni people of Tal Afar began yesterday."

Today the carnage continued when 16 policemen and five civilians were killed and about 20 injured when a suicide bomber drove his car into a convoy of police vehicles in Baghdad's southern Dora district, police said. Together with three other bombings, today's death toll in Baghdad rose to more than 30. >>>>continued

Worst attacks

28 August 2003 - 85 dead

Among those killed by the car bomb attacks at Najaf shrine is the Shia cleric Muhammad Baqr Hakim

1 February 2004 - 109 dead

Twin attacks on Kurdish parties' offices in Irbil

2 March 2004 - 181 dead

Suicide bombers attack Shia festival-goers in Karbala and Baghdad

24 June 2004 - 100 dead

Co-ordinated blasts in Mosul and four other cities

28 February 2005 - 125 dead

Suicide car bomb hits government jobseekers in Hillah

16 July 2005 - 54 dead

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