Nine killed in Iraq car bomb blasts

A parked car exploded near a hospital in Baghdad’s main Shiite district today - the deadliest in a series of bombings killed at least nine people and wounded dozens in Iraq, police said.

The blast in Sadr City targeted street vendors and pedestrians just outside the entrance to the al-Sadr General Hospital. Police said at least five people were killed and 15 wounded.

The attack came two days after a double suicide attack struck a market in the nearby Shiite Shaab neighbourhood, killing at least 82 people on one of the deadliest days since the war started four years ago.

Another parked car bomb struck a gas station in the Shiite city of Hillah killing at least two people and wounding 22, provincial police said.

The city 60 miles south of Baghdad, has been the site of some of the deadliest blasts since the war started four years ago, including a double suicide bombing against a crowd of Shiite pilgrims that killed 120 people on March 6.

In northern Iraq, a car exploded after the driver parked it near Iraqis looking for work in the centre of Tuz Khormato, 130 miles north of Baghdad.

The driver and two workers were killed and 11 others wounded in the attack, police Col Abbas Mohammed Amin said. He said the driver intended to wait until more workers had gathered before detonating the explosives but they went off prematurely, preventing a higher casualty toll.

The attacks raised to at least 517 the number of people killed in the past seven days as suicide bombers and militiamen fought back ferociously despite a US-Iraqi security sweep that is in its seventh week.

The US military, meanwhile, denied that it was involved in airstrikes over Sadr City yesterday after local officials said 20 suspected militants were killed and 14 others wounded, along with seven civilians, in an airstrike targeting a Shiite militant base in eastern Baghdad.

US President George W Bush, the American military and US diplomats in Iraq have expressed cautious optimism about the crackdown on violence that began on February 14 in Baghdad, Anbar province and regions surrounding the capital, but the ease with which suspected al Qaida suicide bombers have continued striking Shiite targets has cast a shadow over the effort.

Only about a third of the additional 30,000 soldiers and Marines that Bush pledged for the security drive are in the country, with the full deployment not expected until June.

The government yesterday vowed it would win the race against terrorism and despair.

“There is a race between the government and the terrorists who are trying to make people reach the level of despair,” said Sami al-Askari, adviser to prime minister Nouri Maliki.

“But the government is doing its best to defeat terrorists and it definitely will not be affected by these bombings.”

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr blamed the United States for the violence and called for a huge anti-American demonstration on April 9, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

Iraqi police said 26 people were killed or found dead nationwide yesterday, a huge drop from the 181 killed on Thursday, most in suicide attacks on markets in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, and the Shaab neighbourhood in the capital’s north.