Source: Reuters
* About 127 wounded by blast in market
* U.S. combat troops to leave cities on June 30
By Sattar Rahim
BAGHDAD, June 24 (Reuters) - A bomb killed at least 72 people on Wednesday at a busy market in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City slum, police said, six days before U.S. combat troops are due to withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities.
About 127 people were wounded by the blast in the poor, mostly Shi'ite Muslim area. A witness said the explosion tore through a part of the Mraidi Market where birds are sold, setting stalls ablaze.
Bloodshed has dropped sharply across Iraq in the past year, but militants including Sunni Islamist al Qaeda continue to launch car and suicide bombings aimed at undermining the government and reigniting sectarian conflict.
Wednesday's market bombing came four days after the U.S. military formally handed control to local forces in Sadr City, where U.S. and Iraqi forces fought fierce battles against Shi'ite militiamen in the spring of 2008.
Raad Latif, who owns a shop near the blast site, said the bomb appeared to have been on a trailer attached to a motorcycle.
"The blast was very big and loud. After we heard it, we closed our shops and rushed to help the injured," Latif said. Initially the security forces kept residents back to allow ambulances and police vehicles into the area, he said.
"After a while they came to their senses and allowed us to help as much as we could ... the scene was horrific," he said.
The office of the Baghdad security spokesman said 62 people had died and 150 were wounded in the explosion.
Three school students died in another bombing in Sadr City on Monday, one of a string of blasts that killed 27 people across Iraq that day. On Saturday, at least 73 people died in a suicide truck bombing outside a mosque in Kirkuk province.
High death tolls remain common despite the fall in overall violence. Two female suicide bombers killed 60 people outside a Shi'ite shrine in the capital this April, just days before twin car bomb blasts killed 51 people in Sadr City.
JUNE 30 DEADLINE APPROACHES
Such attacks cast doubt on the ability of local security forces, rebuilt from the ground up after they were dissolved by U.S. officials in 2003, to vanquish a stubborn insurgency on their own.
"This cowardly act will not shake the determination of our people and armed forces to take over security responsibility and defeat terrorist schemes," Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a minority Kurd, said in a statement following the attack.
Sadr City is a bastion of support for fiery anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia. The Mehdi Army has frozen most activities in the past year and Iraqi government forces have retaken control of the area.
Analysts say attacks are likely to intensify ahead of a parliamentary election in January that will be a crucial test of whether Iraq's feuding factions can live together after years of sectarian slaughter unleashed by the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has built a reputation on reducing the bloodshed and has lauded this month's partial withdrawal of U.S. troops. Maliki, a member of Iraq's Shi'ite majority, has urged Iraqis not to lose heart if insurgents take advantage of the U.S. military drawdown to step up attacks.
Maliki has called the urban withdrawal of combat troops, a milestone in the plan to withdrawal all U.S. troops by 2012, a great victory for Iraq. The cabinet has declared next Tuesday will be a national holiday to mark the occasion.
Earlier on Wednesday, a U.S. military spokesman said only a small number of U.S. troops would be left in Iraqi cities after the June 30 deadline for combat forces to leave urban areas, but that the exact number was still being worked on. [ID:nLO904307]
Some U.S. soldiers will stay behind in urban centres at so-called Joint Security Stations to train and advise local security forces. The U.S. military will also continue to provide intelligence and air support, and be on call if needed.
Brigadier General Steve Lanza told reporters the U.S. military acknowledged the pullback of its forces would pose challenges for Iraq, but there had been only 10 high-profile attacks in June, compared to 16 in May and 28 in April. (Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Missy Ryan and Robert Woodward)
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Bomb kills 13 in latest Baghdad bombing
26 Jun 2009 17:58:40 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Repeats to fix headline)
* Iraq hit with third deadly bombing of the week
* Obama sees security improvements
* Sadr: "What is the Iraqi government doing?"
(Adds comment from Obama)
By Abdul Rahman Dhaher
BAGHDAD, June 26 (Reuters) - A bomb killed at least 13 people at a Baghdad market selling motorbikes and furniture on Friday, the latest in a series of attacks that have intensified ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities.
One police source said as many as 19 people were killed after the bomb, planted on a motorcycle, exploded in the market in the industrial area of Bab al-Sheikh, a mixed but majority Shi'ite Muslim part of central Baghdad.
Forty-five people were wounded, police said.
Shredded shoes and bits of bloody clothing were scattered around the twisted frames of motorbikes. The blast site was swiftly sealed off by Iraqi soldiers and police.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned they expect the number of attacks to rise as U.S. combat troops leave Iraq's urban centers by June 30, a milestone in a bilateral pact that sets a deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by 2012.
A spate of bombings in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq has raised doubts about whether the Iraqi security forces can take over the fight against a stubborn insurgency.
Despite Friday's bombing and two others this week that killed 151 people, U.S. President Barack Obama said Iraq's security had continued to "dramatically improve," but that he had concerns about the political climate.
"I haven't seen as much political progress in Iraq -- negotiations between the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds -- as I would like to see," Obama said in Washington. "So there ... will continue to be incidents of violence inside of Iraq for some time. They are at a much, much lower level than they were in the past."
He said if the government could settle differences on issues like boundaries and oil revenues, Iraq's security situation would improve further.
IRAQIS QUESTION THEIR FORCES
Iraqi police and army have had to be completely rebuilt since U.S. administrators disbanded the Iraqi forces after the U.S. invasion in 2003, a decision that left thousands of trained fighters unemployed and angry and fueled an insurgency.
Despite assertions from the government the U.S. pullback represents a victory for Iraq as it regains its sovereignty, many Iraqis lack faith in their own forces.
On Wednesday, 78 people were killed in a bomb attack in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, just days after a truck bomb killed 73 people near the northern city of Kirkuk.
The attacks have prompted angry responses from Iraqis who blame local security forces for failing to protect them.
"I ask, what is the Iraqi government doing about these explosions?" said firebrand anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, many of whose supporters live in Sadr City. "The government is powerless to protect its people."
Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran and often blames the United States for Iraq's woes, said in a statement the blasts "carry the fingerprints of the occupation forces ... especially as they have occurred a few days before the withdrawal of the army of darkness."
He implored Iraqis to "shed the blood of the occupiers," not of each other.
Iraqi and U.S. officials say the attacks are aimed at reigniting the sectarian war that raged for years between once dominant Sunni Muslims and majority Shi'ites, who have gained supremacy since the fall of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.
Violence is a far cry from what it was during the height of sectarian killing in 2006-2007, but Iraq's untested forces and fractious political class still face major security challenges.
Analysts say violence is likely to spike in the run-up to a parliamentary election next January.
The United States still has 130,000 troops in Iraq six years after the invasion, but the Obama administration is increasingly focused on the war in Afghanistan. (Writing by Missy Ryan and Michael Christie; Editing by Tim Cocks, Sophie Hares and Bill Trott)
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