4 Suicide Bombings Kill 35 in Baghdad

A series of suicide bombings killed at least 35 people, including three children, and injured at least 224 in Baghdad on Monday, turning the beginning of the Ramadan holy month into the capital’s bloodiest day since major fighting was declared over in May.

In just 45 minutes at the beginning of the workday, attackers created pockets of devastation, damaging houses, destroying shops and incinerating cars. The swiftness and ferocity of the coordinated assaults traumatized this city, which has been reeling from violence and a shortage of such basics as electricity since the occupation began.

The overwhelming majority of the casualties were Iraqi, though at least one American soldier was killed when the bombers targeted the International Committee of the Red Cross and three Iraqi police stations. At least eight Iraqi policemen were killed along with 26 civilians.

Officials said they didn’t know if the four dead bombers had been included in the death toll.

A fifth suicide bomber who approached another police station was unable to detonate his loaded car before being shot by Iraqi policemen. The officers who caught the bomber said they believed he was Syrian because he had a Syrian passport in his pocket and cursed them in the neighboring Arab nation’s dialect.

“The death toll today has been incredible. The wounded toll is very high. But they both would have been higher if not for the heroics of the Iraqi police,” Army Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, assistant to the commander in charge of Baghdad security, said of the revamped security force.

As has been the case for months of guerrilla-style attacks across the country, there were conflicting theories about whom to blame for the carnage. American officials here initially accused foreign terrorists, but Pentagon officials in Washington suggested Baathists still loyal to the ousted regime of former President Saddam Hussein were the culprits.

At the White House, President Bush told reporters that the attacks would not force the U.S. to leave Iraq. He insisted that the increasing violence was caused by insurgents who were becoming “desperate” as the U.S. and its allies made progress in stabilizing and rebuilding the country.

With Iraq’s civil institutions so weak, the impact of Monday’s attacks could fall especially hard on Iraqis who have come to rely on the Red Cross and other aid organizations to provide clean water, medicine, food and sanitation. The Red Cross announced it was cutting back its operations and withdrawing its foreign workers, leaving 800 Iraqi workers to continue relief efforts.

Other aid agencies have reduced their presence, and some groups are so anxious about the growing violence that they won’t discuss staffing for fear of creating targets.

CARE International, another large nongovernmental aid organization, has maintained a handful of international staff members and dozens of Iraqi employees in the country. But because of the bombings, carjackings and thefts from warehouses, it is constantly reassessing the security situation.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the bombing of the Red Cross a “crime against humanity.” U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said, “The ICRC is a universally respected humanitarian organization. Its neutrality and impartiality are the mainstays of its operations. Today’s attack on it is a crime against humanity.”

The U.N. has withdrawn all but about 30 of its international staff members since the Aug. 19 suicide bombing of its Baghdad headquarters, which killed 22 people.

Since the Jordanian Embassy here was attacked in early August, suicide car bombs have claimed the lives of 96 people and wounded nearly 500 in 11 incidents. The single deadliest bombing, at a mosque in the holy city of Najaf, involved a car packed with explosives but was not carried out by a suicide bomber. About 120 people were killed in that blast.

On Monday, hospital emergency rooms all over this city of 5 million were overwhelmed with the wounded, distraught relatives paced the edge of bomb sites in search of loved ones last seen setting off for work, and the American military rapidly cordoned off every site as investigators searched for evidence.

The bombings, which came on the day when many Iraqis began the holy month of Ramadan, followed a rocket attack Sunday on the Rashid Hotel, home to many American officials and military personnel in Baghdad. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was in the hotel during the Sunday attack, which killed Lt. Col. Charles H. Beuhring, 40, of Fayetteville, N.C.

The attack on the Rashid was believed to have been the work of members of Hussein’s former regime, while Monday’s assaults were highly organized and involved suicide bombers -- usually the markings of Al Qaeda or a group such as Ansar al Islam, which the U.S. says is affiliated with the terrorist network, officials said.

“Many of us don’t believe that the Al Rashid attack and today’s events are linked,” said Hertling, the American general. “There is now evidence to suggest we have foreign fighters in Baghdad.”

The Red Cross said Monday’s attack was the first of its kind on the agency, which prides itself on its neutrality. It has been in Iraq through wars and other violence, but this is a new level of risk.

“ICRC works in dangerous environments, this is its mission,” spokeswoman Amanda Williamson said. “What is especially worrying is when it is deliberately targeted as appears to be the case in this instance.”

The attacks shocked most Iraqis, many of whom have expressed pride that their city is looking more normal.

“What are they doing? The majority of the dead and wounded are Iraqis. Many of them were just people walking on the road,” said Ali Hussein, a physician at Abin Nafees Hospital, where many of the victims of the Red Cross bombing were treated.

As well as timing the attacks to occur in rapid-fire succession, it seemed that the bombers had managed to steal several ambulances and Iraqi police uniforms to help camouflage their activities. The bomber in the Red Cross attack drove what looked like an ambulance into the protective concrete wall outside the agency, and the disguise may have allowed the vehicle to get close to the building without attracting much attention. At least 12 people were killed.

Mohammed Hassan Mahdi, the director of an ambulance unit that responds to problems in an area that spans 12 police districts, said that one of his ambulances had been missing with its driver since Sunday and that he suspected it had been hijacked. He added that he had heard of at least two others missing from area hospitals.

“It is strongly possible that the Iraqis are financing this,” said Mahdi, 35, adding: “All of these are suicide attacks. I don’t think Iraqis have the expertise to do these kinds of attacks. And anyway Iraqis do not do this kind of thing. They don’t do jihad, this isn’t Palestine. The people doing this are mercenaries.”

Of the police attacks, the most severe was on the Shaab station in northern Baghdad, set in a busy and well-known souk where shops sell an array of products -- ranging from television sets and dishwashers to groceries and jewelry. Much of the neighborhood is quite poor, and there is limited sympathy there for the Americans.

As was the case with all the attacks Monday, the suicide bomber detonated his load near the least protected part of the police compound. The driver brought his car around the side of the station where there are only furls of razor wire, according to neighborhood residents.

Late Monday afternoon, American flatbed trucks were bringing 8-foot-high concrete blocks to surround the station.

“It’s late for that,” said Abu Zaman Magid Azzawi, 56, a laborer who said he believed the neighborhood was targeted because many of its residents are Shiite Muslims. Hussein’s regime favored the country’s Sunni Muslim minority.

However, Amer Abdul Karim, a grocer who was talking with him, disagreed, instead blaming the Americans. He and others said that the day before, helicopters were circling overhead for several hours, clear evidence the Americans knew something was going to happen.

“They have to put in checkpoints to inspect all the cars. We don’t want this ‘liberty’ that they are talking about, we want security -- that is more important than anything,” said Karim, whose grocery store is about a block from the police station.

“I have three children, I want security. Tell me, will it come?” asked Karim, his voice rough with anger.

The Americans did receive a warning of an attack in Shaab, and at the moment the bomber detonated his car, the local U.S. commander was discussing the matter with the local police chief.

“The American officer was in my office and was telling me about this warning when I was knocked to the floor,” said Police Chief Ali Abdul Hassan, 40, a father of seven, while he lay in a hospital bed recovering from cuts.

“He was telling me that the Americans had information that there would be an explosion in a crowded area of Shaab ... and actually the warning was against cooperating with the Americans,” Hassan said.

At the Eelam station in a residential Baghdad neighborhood, a small sedan drove through the gate to the parking lot and smashed into the building’s entrance before the bomb detonated, said a military police official at the scene.

Witnesses said they believed that at least two people were killed. Three cars near the station were charred to their frames, and one smoldered for hours after the blast. Several nearby houses were damaged.

The scene at the Khadra station in western Baghdad was little different. Nearby shop windows were shattered, metal door jambs twisted as if they were rubber, and even hours after the blast, blood-spattered residents were walking in a daze.

U.S. troops set up a perimeter and in the melee shot and wounded a civilian trying to cross the line.

Damage to the station itself was limited because the street on the side of the median closest to the station had been closed to traffic for safety reasons. The bomber was traveling on the far side and only managed to maneuver his car up onto the median, plowing it into the concrete barriers about 50 feet from the station entrance, before detonating the vehicle, said Lt. Col. Eric Nantz of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, who was in charge of the area.

One American, Pvt. Jonathan I. Falaniko, 20, of Pago Pago, American Samoa, was killed in the attack on the Khadra station. That death brought the reported number of dead American personnel to 351 since the war began March 20.

The Iraqi fatalities in the Khadra attack were all children. A 14-year-old girl was carrying her infant sibling when the bomb went off, killing her and the baby in her arms, said Mahdi of the ambulance service.

Nearby, a 12-year-old boy named Amar was walking to school when the blast occurred.

“He was carrying his books in his arms,” Mahdi said. “His head was separated from his body. I transferred him to the hospital, what else could I do?”

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Staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations and Mohammed Arrawi and Said Rifawi of The Times’ Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.