Bombings continue after Baghdad's deadliest day

A suicide bomber killed sixteen policemen in Baghdad today, a day after the capital suffered its bloodiest day as US troops and insurgents clashed in the troubled western town of Ramadi.

More than a dozen co-ordinated bombings ripped through Baghdad yesterday, killing 160 people and wounding 570. Many of the victims were day labourers lured by a suicide attacker posing as an employer.

Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attacks in the name of Sunni insurgents, saying it was a retaliation for the rout of militants at a base close to the Syrian border.

In Baghdad’s southern district of Dora, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives early today while driving past a police convoy, said Lt. Thair Mahmoud of the Rapid Response Unit. At least 16 policemen were killed, along with five passers-by. Twenty-one people were wounded.

Meanwhile, insurgents in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk detonated a roadside bomb next to a passing patrol, killing two police officers and wounding four, said Col. Anwar Hassan, head of the local security unit.

US and Iraqi troops in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad, came under mortar attack this morning as armed militants roamed the streets, police Capt. Nasir Alusi said.

All shops in the town – a major insurgent stronghold – were closed and the streets were empty as automatic gunfire echoed from the town’s industrial zone, Alusi said.

Yesterday’s spasm of violence terrorised the capital for more than nine hours. The first attack, at 6.30am, was the deadliest: a suicide car blast which tore through the predominantly Shiite Muslim neighbourhood of Kazimiyah.

In what was believed to be a new tactic, the bomber set off the explosive after calling the construction and other workers to his small van and enticing them with promises of employment, a witness said.

At least 112 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded, according to Health Ministry officials. Twisted hulks of vehicles blocked the bloodstained main street in Kazimiyah’s Oruba Square.

Al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, purportedly declared “all-out war” on Shiite Arabs, Iraqi troops and the government in an audiotape posted yesterday on an internet site known for carrying extremist Islamic content.

The al-Zarqawi tape was a clear attempt, coming on the heels of the attacks, to create a climate of fear, sow deeper sectarian discord and scare Iraqis away from the October 15 referendum on a new constitution.

Iraqi forces arrested two insurgents in connection with the Kazimiyah bombing, one of them a Palestinian and the other a Libyan, Iraqi television quoted Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari as saying.

Al-Jaafari also said the suicide bomber was a Syrian, without offering any details how the identification was made so quickly.

The bloodshed came as US and Iraqi forces pressed their offensive aainst insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar and along the Euphrates River valley, striking hard at what officials have said were militants sneaking across the border from Syria.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said in a web posting that it launched the attacks, some less than 10 minutes apart, in response to the Tal Afar offensive, which began on Saturday.

“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,” said the al Qaida statement posted on a militant website. Its authenticity could not be confirmed.

The audiotape was posted later yesterday. The speaker, introduced as al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, said his militant forces would attack any Iraqi they believe has co-operated with the Tal Afar offensive.

“If proven that any of Iraq’s national guards, police or army are agents of the Crusaders, they will be killed and his house will demolished or burned - after evacuating all women and children – as a punishment,” the speaker said.

A spokesman for the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars condemned Zarqawi’s threats, and said he was trying to foment civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.

“Zarqawi speaks from the position of revenge,” Muhammed Bashar Faidi, a spokesman for the group, said on Al-Arabiya television yesterday. “This position by Zarqawi is aimed at provoking sectarian war, but if he wants a war he should fight the occupation forces and not innocents.”

In addition yesterday, attackers killed 17 men – including Iraqi drivers and construction workers for the US military – in a Sunni village north of Baghdad before dawn.

That raised the death toll in and around the capital yesterday to 177. A senior Health Ministry official said 570 people were wounded in all.

At least six attacks targeted US forces, Iraqi authorities said. The US military said there were four direct attacks on Americans, with 10 soldiers wounded. No US deaths were reported.

Speaking before al-Qaida’s claim of responsibility, a senior American military official forecast the claim, saying he believed the rash of bombings was in retaliation for Tal Afar.

The officer said the Tal Afar sweep had damaged the insurgency, which he said was made up of about 20% foreign fighters.

A gunfight between insurgents and paramilitary police broke out in the capital’s southern neighbourhood of Saydiya. One policeman was killed and another wounded, a spokesman said.

Police found the bodies of seven unidentified men in various parts of the capital. All had their hands tied and were blindfolded.

In northern Baghdad, police said they found the body of a policeman who had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

In Baqouba, one policeman was killed and three injured in separate attacks by insurgents using mortars and small-arms fire.