Death toll from Baghdad university blasts reaches 70

Twin car bombs tore through a leading Baghdad university as students left classes yesterday, killing 70 people in the deadliest single attack in nearly two months and marking a full-fledged resumption of sectarian violence.

At least 147 Iraqis were killed or found dead yesterday after two weeks of relative calm.

The spasm of bloodshed – most of it the apparent work of Sunni militants - coincided strikingly with a new UN report that said a staggering number of Iraqi civilians, 34,452, were killed in sectarian violence in 2006 – nearly triple the number reported by the government.

The country’s Shiite-dominated leadership has routinely labelled the UN figures “inaccurate and exaggerated” but has not explained why.

Yesterday’s slaughter hit mainly Shiite targets or districts in Baghdad.

Taqi al-Moussawi, dean of al-Mustansiriya University, told state-run Iraqiya television there were two explosions in small buses as students were packing into a line of vehicles for the ride home at about 3.45pm.

Police said another 133 people were wounded.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki blamed the attack on “terrorists and Saddamists” seeking revenge for Monday’s hanging of two of Saddam Hussein’s top aides, who were convicted with him for the slaying of 148 Shiite men and boys after a 1982 assassination attempt in the northern town of Dujail.

The violence yesterday against Shiites may signal a campaign by Sunni insurgents to shed as much blood as possible before the deployment of 21,500 more American troops. Most of the additional US troops will be used to back up the Iraqi army in a security sweep to rid the capital of Sunni and Shiite gunmen.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Kuwait for a meeting with eight Arab nations to discuss ways to keep Iraq from sliding into civil war, sought to lower any expectations that the troop buildup would quickly pacify the country.

“Violent people will always be able to kill innocent people,” she said. “So even with the new security plan, with the will and capability of the Iraqi government and with American forces to help reinforce Iraqi forces, there is still going to be violence.”

She said the UN civilian death figures differ from others. “But whatever the number of civilians who have died in Iraq – and there obviously are competing numbers – but whatever the number is, it’s too many,” she said.

Yesterday’s death toll from the al-Mustansiriya bombings made it the single most deadly attack against civilians in Iraq since November 23, when a series of car bombs and mortar attacks by suspected al-Qaida fighters in Baghdad’s Sadr City Shiite slum killed at least 215 people.