Iraq counting cost of car bomb

In the deadliest single strike since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a suicide car bomber attacked mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits lined up for physical exams at a medical clinic, killing 115 and wounding 132 there and at a nearby market.

Yesterday’s bombing presented the boldest challenge yet to Iraq’s efforts to build a security force that can take over from the Americans.

The explosion in Hillah, a largely Shiite Muslim town about 60 miles south of Baghdad, was so powerful that the only thing remaining of the bomber’s car was the twisted wreckage of the engine block.

Dozens of people stepped through small lakes of blood that pooled on the street to retrieve shattered limbs, severed feet and hands.

Empty shoes and sandals of those killed or wounded were thrown into a corner. Scorch marks infused with blood covered the clinic’s walls. Morgue workers unloaded plastic body bags from pickup trucks as weeping relatives looked on.

Some of the victims were shoppers or vendors from a nearby outdoor street market selling produce, sandwiches and other food. But most were recruits waiting outside the clinic.

The bombing comes at a time when the Sunni Arab insurgency is trying to disrupt the formation of a new government set to be led by majority Shiites for the first time in modern history.

Iraqi forces are eventually supposed to take over responsibility for security - the key to Washington’s exit strategy – but they remain under-equipped, ill-prepared to fight insurgents and often make easy targets.

The Shiites have refrained from striking back – mostly at the behest of their most revered leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is widely credited with bringing them this far.

Al-Sistani wants nothing to impede the Shiites from gaining the political power they have craved in Iraq, and will not allow them to engage in a sectarian war.

It’s not that they lack the firepower – nominally disbanded Shiite militias could easily field thousands of tough and effective fighters that could deal a crushing blow to the insurgency.

Finding a way to end the largely Sunni insurgency and soothe the fears of Sunnis who have dominated the Iraqi political sphere for centuries will be the most crucial and complex task for the new government.

There are no official figures available, but a count found that 234 people were killed and 429 people were injured in at least 55 incidents from January 1 until election day. Casualties rose in February, which saw at least 38 incidents that resulted in at least 311 deaths and 433 injuries.

Although Monday’s bombing did not appear to be an explicit attack against Shiites, most of the victims were Shiites.