BAGHDAD: Five massive vehicle-borne bombs rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 127 people, including women and students, and wounding hundreds in the third co-ordinated massacre to devastate the city since August.
The attacks shattered a month of calm in the Iraqi capital and came hours before an official said the country s general election, the second since the US-led ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein, would be held on March 6.
Baghdad s top security officer said the attacks – four of which were conducted by suicide attackers driving cars or minibuses – and which targeted key government buildings, bore the touch of Al-Qaeda.
One of the suicide bombers detonated his payload at an office of the finance ministry, another attacker struck at a tunnel leading to the labor ministry, and a third drove a four-wheel-drive car into a court building.
The suicide bomber drove up to the court and the security forces tried to stop him by firing their Kalashnikovs, but they did not kill him before he exploded, police sergeant Emad Fadhil told AFP.
A fourth suicide bomber in a car struck a police patrol in Dora, in southern Baghdad, causing 15 deaths, 12 of them students at a nearby technical college, an interior ministry official said.
The first explosion in the centre of Baghdad was heard at 10:25 am (0725 GMT), another came within seconds and a third one minute later.
Although no group has yet claimed responsibility, the timing of the blasts and the fact that three of them targeted government buildings bears all the hallmarks of an Al-Qaeda operation.
The interior ministry official said 127 people had been killed and 448 wounded in the bombings, with the finger of blame pointed at Al-Qaeda.
The same black hand that was behind the attacks in August and October committed today s bombings, Major General Qassim Atta, a spokesman for security operations in Baghdad, told AFP.
This has the touch of Al-Qaeda and the Baathists, he said, referring to the outlawed Baath party of now executed dictator Saddam.
Both groups were blamed for bloody attacks – including truck bombings outside the finance, foreign and justice ministries – in Baghdad in August and October that killed more than 250 people and punctured confidence in the Iraqi security forces.
Those caught up in Tuesday s bombings described scenes of horror.
I heard the sound of the explosion, I fainted, then I found myself on this bed covered with blood, Um Saeed, whose arms and face were wounded in the court blast, told AFP at a local hospital, her clothes covered in blood.
An official at Medical City hospital in the centre of the capital said many of the 39 bodies they had received had been blown apart, and some of them were women.
Violence across Iraq dropped dramatically last month, with the fewest deaths in attacks recorded since the US-led invasion of 2003. Official figures showed a total of 122 people were killed in November.
However the Baghdad government and the US military have warned of a rise in attacks in the run up to the election.
We believe that there will be an attempt to conduct more attacks between now and the election, General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, said in November.
Tuesday s bombings came two days after the Iraqi parliament passed a law governing the vote, after more than two months of delays.
The presidency council, comprising President Jalal Talabani and his two deputies, are yet to officially announce the date but Qassim Abboudi of Iraq s Independent High Electoral Commission said March 6 had been chosen.
The presidency council decided on March 6, 2010, he said.
