Families prepare to bury 120 suicide attack dead

Weeping and beating their chests, hundreds of people inspected bodies at an Iraqi morgue today, trying to identify friends and family who died in the single deadliest attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Hospital spokesman Ali Hassoun said at least five people had succumbed to wounds overnight, raising the toll to 120 dead in the suicide bombing of military recruits in Hillah yesterday.

Officials said more than 146 others were wounded in the blast, which targeted mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits lined up for medicals at a clinic.

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

In Hillah, distraught relatives at the morgue placed the dead into coffins and loaded them on to pick-up trucks, taking them to city mosques and homes where the bodies will be washed before burial, a Muslim tradition in Iraq.

Many of the corpses, charred or dismembered, were unrecognisable, stuffed into white plastic bags. Other bodies lay on the ground in the open because the overwhelmed morgue had no place to store them.

“We blame Hillah police for this tragedy because they didn’t take the necessary measures to protect innocent people,” said Hussein Hassoun, who lost two nephews who were queuing for medical check-ups, trying to join the local police force.

Funeral processions are expected to be held in Hillah and many of the dead will be taken to the holy Shiite city of Najaf for burial today.

The explosion in the 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.

Some of the victims were shoppers or vendors from a nearby outdoor street market. 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.