Bombing death toll increases

Funeral processions began today for the people who were killed by car bombs and mortars in Baghdad’s largest Shiite district, the deadliest attack since the war began.

Iraqi officials and police today said 202 people were killed and 252 were wounded in the bombing attack by Sunni-Arab insurgents on the capital’s Sadr City slum.

Hundreds of men, women and children beat their chests, chanted and cried as they walked beside vehicles carrying the caskets of their loved ones.

Baghdad remained under a 24-hour curfew aimed at stopping widespread sectarian violence in the capital.

However, Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki, himself a Shiite, ordered police to guard the processions carrying victims of yesterday’s attacks by Sunni Muslim insurgents in Sadr City to Najaf, the holy Shiite city where they will be buried.

“God is great. There is no God but Allah. Mohammed is the messenger of Allah,” about 300 mourners chanted as they beat their chests while walking through the Sadr City slum alongside slow moving the cars and minivans carrying 16 wooden caskets tied to the rooftops.

Some of the men and women repeatedly touched the sides of the vehicles or the caskets in an effort to say a final farewell to their relatives or friends.

Once the processions reached the edge of Sadr City in north-eastern Baghdad, the cars and minivans left most of the mourners behind for the 100-mile drive south to Najaf, a treacherous journey that passes through many checkpoints and areas controlled by Sunni militants in Iraq’s so-called “Triangle of Death.”

Three mortar rounds exploded near the Abu Hanifa mosque, Sunni Islam’s most important shrine in Baghdad, at 9.45am today, wounding one guard, said its sheikh, Samir al-Obaidi but the rest of Baghdad remained mostly quiet this morning, police said.

In addition to the curfew, Friday is a day of worship in mostly Muslim Iraq when many people have the day off work.

For several months, the government has been imposing a 11am to 3pm ban on vehicles on Fridays, forcing people to walk to their local mosques for services.

In yesterday’s well-co-ordinated attack, Sunni insurgents blew up five car bombs and fired mortars in Sadr City, killing at least 202 people and wounding 252 in a dramatic attack that sent the U.S. ambassador racing to meet with Iraqi leaders in an effort to contain the growing sectarian war.

Shiite mortar teams quickly retaliated, firing 10 shells that badly damaged the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Azamiya neighbourhood and killed one person.

Eight more rounds slammed down near the offices of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the top Sunni Muslim organisation in Iraq, setting nearby houses on fire. Two other mortar barrages on Sunni neighbourhoods in west Baghdad killed nine and wounded 21, police said last night.

The bloodshed underlined the impotence of the Iraqi army and police to quell determined sectarian extremists at a time when the United States appears to be considering a move to accelerate the hand-over of security responsibilities. US President George Bush plans to visit the region next week to discuss the security situation with Maliki.

“We condemn such acts of senseless violence that are clearly aimed at undermining the Iraqi people’s hopes for a peaceful and stable Iraq,” White House spokesman Jeanie Mamo said in Washington.

Last night, Iraq’s government imposed the curfew in the capital and also closed its international airport to all commercial flights. The transport ministry then took the highly unusual step of closing the airport and docks in the southern city of Basra, the country’s main outlet to the vital shipping lanes in the Gulf.

Leaders from Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities issued a televised appeal for calm after a hastily organised meeting with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Al-Maliki also went on state TV and blamed Sunni radicals and followers of Saddam Hussein for the attacks on Sadr City.

The co-ordinated car bombings – three by suicide drivers and two of parked cars – billowed black smoke up into clouds hanging low over blood-smeared streets jammed with twisted and charred cars and buses.

Hospital corridors and waiting rooms were awash in blood and mangled survivors of bombs that struck at 15-minute intervals in the sprawling Shiite slum, which is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a key Maliki backer.

The militia and associated death squads are believed responsible for the slayings of hundreds of Sunnis since suspected al Qaida in Iraq militants bombed a revered Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra last February.

Tat attack set off a surge of retaliatory killings between Shiites and Sunnis that have raged all year.

Al-Sadr asociates said the cleric feared that the Sadr City bombings would make it impossible for him to hold back his heavily armed fighters from a furious round of revenge attacks.

In a TV statement read by an aide, al-Sadr urged unity among his followers to end the US “occupation” that he said is causing Iraq’s strife.

Al-Sadr said the attacks coincided with the seventh anniversary of the assassination of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a revered Shiite religious leader. The anniversary reckoning was by the Islamic calendar.

“Had the late al-Sadr been among you he would have said preserve your unity,” the statement said. “Don’t carry out any act before you ask the Hawza (Shiite seminary in Najaf). Be the ones who are unjustly treated and not the ones who treat others unjustly.”

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pre-eminent Shiite religious figure in Iraq, condemned the bombings and issued condolences to family members of those who were killed. He called for self-control among his followers.

Iraq is suffering through a period of unparalleled violence.

The UN said on Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the most in any month since the war began 44 months ago, and a figure certain to be eclipsed in November.

The UN said citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month, and that at least 1.6 million Iraqis have left since the war began in March 2003.

The Sadr City slaughter occurred just moments after US helicopters and Iraqi armour had to intervene to stop an attack by 30 masked Sunni gunmen who tried to storm the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry, about a mile west of the Shiite slum. Seven ministry guards were wounded.

Heavy fighting was reported around the Jadriyah Bridge near Baghdad University and Associated Press personnel saw 12 pickup trucks loaded with men armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and heavy machine guns driving through the center of the city before the curfew was imposed.