Al-Qaida blamed as Iraq blasts kill 68

YESTERDAY'S devastating series of explosions which left 68 people dead and 238 injured in the southern Iraqi city of Basra were swiftly linked with al-Qaida.

At least 16 children in a school bus were among the dead and four British soldiers were injured in the blasts.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned the attacks as "vicious" and said they deliberately targeted Iraqis who were working hard to build a new Iraq.

"Those responsible clearly have no respect for the lives of their fellow Iraqi Muslims and care nothing for the people of Iraq," he said.

Near-simultaneous suspected car bombs ripped through three police stations at rush-hour yesterday morning in the British-controlled city, with a fourth blast two hours later at a police academy.

Forty-five people were killed in the police station blasts and 10 in the police academy explosions, witnesses said.

The injured included four British soldiers at the police academy in the suburb of Al Zubayr, said Major Hisham al-Halawi, a spokesman for British forces in Basra.

The mayor of Basra, Wael Abdul-Hafeez, pointed the finger at the terrorist group associated with Osama bin Laden.

"I accuse al-Qaida," he said. "We have arrested a person disguised in a police uniform. We are questioning him."

Iraqi Interior Minister Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi said the attacks bore the "fingerprints" of those behind a recent explosion at a Shiite shrine in Karbala and the city of Irbil in February.

US officials have linked last month's attack in Karbala to al-Qaida.

Mr al-Sumeidi said: "Today, we all have lost children who are part of Iraq's future which terrorists want to destroy."

More than 40 dead and 200 injured from the blast were taken to Basra's Educational Hospital.

Dozens of bodies could be seen in the morgue and in the hallways.

Another five dead and 36 injured were evacuated to a second hospital, said officials at Basra General Hospital.

The attacks, at 7.30am local time (4.30am Irish time), were described as a "worrying" and tragic development in an area which has remained largely calm in spite of fierce fighting in other parts of the country.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed his condolences "to the families of those Iraqi people, including children, who were tragically murdered in a series of explosions in Basra this morning".

He told the House of Commons the perpetrators wanted to stifle democracy in Iraq.

"The terrorists are becoming sufficiently desperate that they are prepared to attack the most defenceless people they can find," he said.

He added that there was "intense anger" among the vast majority of the Iraqi people towards those targeting innocent civilians.

Two school buses passing by a police station in the Saudia district were destroyed in the attacks.

Basra's governor Wael Abdul-Latif, who is also a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said 16 of the dead were children.

Cars outside the police station were charred. The interior of one of the school buses was burnt-out, its seats shredded.

The explosion left a hole two yards deep and three yards wide in front of the Saudia station. British forces were trying to help at the scene of the police station explosions, but their efforts were being hampered by protesters. As the scale of the tragedy unfurled, military experts described the bombings as tragic but to some extent expected.