Dozens killed in attacks across Iraq

Dozens of people were killed today when two car bombs and a suicide bomber struck outside a textile factory.

The government blamed al Qaida in Iraq for violence in Baghdad, saying the terror group is stepping up its attacks now to exploit political instability.

More than two months after the March 7 elections, it is not clear who will control the next Iraqi government and the US is planning to pull out half of its 92,000 troops over the next four months.

In the latest in a series of attacks that killed 99 people, three bombs hit the southern Shiite port city of Basra. One exploded in a marketplace, killing at least 15, hospital and police officials said.

The violence began in the capital where at least 10 people were killed in what appeared to be co-ordinated attacks against police and army checkpoints across Baghdad. Both Shiites and Sunnis were targeted in attacks around the country.

The most deadly incident was a bombing in the Shiite city of Hillah, the capital of Babil province 60 miles south of Baghdad. A suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his belt blew himself up among a crowd trying to help victims of two car bombs that went off earlier outside a textile factory, said Babil provincial police spokesman Major Muthana Khalid.

At least 45 were killed and 140 wounded in the triple blasts, Khalid and al-Hillah hospital director Zuhair al Khafaji said.

Khalid said the two car bombs parked outside the factory about 25 yards apart exploded first as workers were leaving the factory. They were believed to be detonated by remote control.

Then as rescuers and workers were trying to help the injured, the suicide attacker struck.

The day’s violence began in Baghdad with the checkpoint attacks. Most of the incidents were drive-by shootings in which assailants wearing uniforms of city government-employed cleaners used weapons fixed with silencers to spray checkpoints and patrols with bullets.

Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi, spokesman for Baghdad’s security operations centre, said Iraqi security forces arrested one suspect and seized a pistol with a silencer.

The violence delivered a chilling reminder that insurgents are still able to stage large scale operations despite security gains by Iraqi and US forces over past years.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But al-Moussawi blamed al Qaida in Iraq for the Baghdad attacks, saying the terror group is attempting to exploit Iraq’s political instability.

“Al Qaida is trying to ... use some gaps created by some political problems,” the Iraqi security spokesman told Arabiya TV. “There are well-known agendas for the terrorist groups operating in Iraq. Some of these groups are supported regionally and internationally with the aim of influencing the political and democratic process inside Iraq.”

In other attacks Monday the small town of Suwayrah, 25 miles (40 kilometres) south of Baghdad, was hit by a pair of bombs – one in a parked car and the other planted along a road – that killed 11 passers-by and wounded dozens, an Iraqi police official and a hospital worker in the nearby city of Kut said.

In Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad, city Mayor Mohammed Jassim was injured when bombs in parked cars targeted his convoy. In all, five people were killed and 18 injured in the attack, said a city police official.

At least six people were killed west of Baghdad in the city of Abu Ghraib by three different bombings , Iraqi officials said.

Seven more were killed in four separate attacks stretching from the northern city of Mosul to the Shiite city of Musayyib south of Baghdad.