Dozens killed in Iraq blasts

Bombs in Baghdad and the northern oil centre of Kirkuk today killed more than 60 people, police said.

The explosions occurred as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki left for a visit to Britain and the US to discuss security and how the conflict between Israel and Lebanon has affected his country, officials said.

Earlier, Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition mounted a major crackdown on the country’s most feared Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, who are blamed by Sunnis for many of the sectarian kidnappings and killings that threaten to tear the country apart.

The Baghdad bombing occurred when a suicide driver detonated explosives inside a van in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City at the entrance to the Jameelah market, packed with shoppers and sellers.

An Iraqi army statement said 34 people were killed and 73 were wounded. Eight more people were killed and 20 wounded when a second bomb exploded two hours later at a local government building in Sadr City, the Iraqi army said.

In Kirkuk, a car bomb detonated near a courthouse in the city market district, killing 20 and wounding more than 150, according to a police spokesman.

It was the fourth car bombing this month in Kirkuk, where tensions are rising among Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen for control of the area’s vast oil wealth.

Officials said the toll was so high because the blast triggered fires in old wooden shops, suffocating many people. Others suffered burns when the car bomb ignited chemicals stored in some shops.

The wave of bombings, shootings and sectarian killings has plunged Iraq’s new unity government into a deep crisis only two months after Maliki took office, pledging to pursue national reconciliation and to pave the way for a US military withdrawal.

Instead, the US military is planning to bolster its forces in Baghdad to cope with the security crisis.

In Sadr City, dazed and angry people milled about the car bombing site, many of them still reeling from the effects of an early morning raid against what the US military described as “death squad” members.

It was the second major car bombing in Sadr City this month. A blast on July 1 killed 66 people, and set off a new wave of reprisal killings and kidnappings of Sunnis by Shiite extremists seeking revenge.

Before dawn today, Iraqi troops and US advisers raided Sadr City and the mostly Shiite district of Shula, US and Iraqi officials said.

Two hostages were freed in the operation. Two people were arrested in Shula, officials said.

“We could not sleep because of the raid, and today we woke up with the explosion of the car bomb,” one man said without giving his name. “How long is it going to be like this?”

Last weekend, British troops arrested the commander of Mahdi forces in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.

The security crisis has diverted attention among the Shiite political establishment from the Israeli attacks against the Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Nevertheless, some Shiite politicians had urged Maliki to cancel his Washington trip to protest the Lebanon attacks.

Maliki, a former Shiite activist who spent years in exile in Syria, has condemned Israel’s offensive and has complained that the US and the international community have not done enough to stop it.

Maliki told reporters he would convey that message personally to Bush.

“The hostile acts against Lebanon will have effects on the region and we are not far from what is going on in Lebanon,” he said. “We will speak with the United Nations and American government to call for a ceasefire quickly.”