Car Bomb Kills at Least 115 in Iraq

At least 115 people were killed and more than 100 wounded Monday morning when a car bomb ripped through a crowd outside a medical center south of the Iraqi capital. Many of the victims were men waiting for physical examinations required for jobs in the Iraqi security forces.

The blast was one of the deadliest attacks since the war began, and it demonstrated insurgents’ ability and willingness to keep fighting despite last month’s parliamentary election and the recent arrests of several key suspects.

Witnesses in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, said the bomber was driving a gray Mitsubishi sedan and talked his way past a police checkpoint even though the area around the clinic had been closed to vehicle traffic.

“The driver insisted on entering and told the police he had a job to do there,” said Koudair Abed Sada, 29. “They let him in, and immediately the explosion occurred.”

As many as 400 people were in the area when the bomber detonated his explosives. Ambulances rushed to extract the wounded from piles of corpses and scattered body parts as stunned onlookers expressed outrage and disbelief.

The casualties overwhelmed local medical facilities, Hillah Hospital director Mohammed Dhia said in an interview on Al Arabiya television. Bloodied victims filled the hospital’s corridors and courtyards as officials appealed to hospitals in neighboring towns for blood donations.

Dhia estimated that as many as 30 severely injured victims could have been saved but died due to the lack of doctors, medicine and operating space. “We could not handle them all,” he said.

The targeted medical clinic is near the city center, close to a market, and Dhia said at least seven women and eight children were among the dead. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Monday’s blast highlighted the pervasive lack of security in Iraq at a pivotal and sensitive period in the nation’s political transformation. Although U.S. and Iraqi officials had warned that insurgent attacks were unlikely to rapidly diminish after the Jan. 30 election, tight security allowed voting to proceed with fewer casualties than many people expected.

The voting buoyed the spirits of many Iraqis, sparking a sense of optimism that similarly followed other milestones, such as the capture of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein in December 2003 and the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004.

But just as violence returned after each of those events, attacks picked up in early February.

On Feb. 7 and 8, back-to-back strikes on security force recruiting centers left more than two dozen people dead. On Feb. 11, another two dozen people died as attackers targeted a bakery, a mosque and other sites. Nearly 30 people were slain Feb. 18 in attacks on mosques and other targets on the eve of the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashura. Fifty-four died on the holiday itself.

Ongoing crackdowns by Iraqi and U.S. forces have failed to halt the attacks, and the violence has ravaged the nation’s infrastructure as well as the public psyche. Violence-weary Iraqis are desperate for the return of a semblance of normalcy and economic stability. Even some ardent critics of the former regime say they yearn for the relative security of the Hussein era, when all they had to fear was the government.

Violence has been highest in areas west and north of Baghdad, in regions dominated by Sunni Arabs who were favored under Hussein and fear a loss of power in the new political order. But Babil province south of the capital, where Hillah is located, also has been plagued by attacks, as has Baghdad.

Bombings, ambushes and other assaults continue on a daily basis, and the capital remains an extremely dangerous place. U.S. and Iraqi officials live and work there in fortified compounds and move around in armed convoys or fly in military helicopters and airplanes.

Insurgent attacks plague all major roads connecting Baghdad to the rest of Iraq, lending a sense of siege to the capital. Well-coordinated sabotage has thwarted efforts to restore electrical service, maintain fuel supplies and rebuild infrastructure.

Monday’s bombing was among the most lethal since the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. A car bomb in August that year killed more than 100 people in the southern city of Najaf, and in February 2004 a similar number of people died in the northern city of Irbil when suicide attackers targeted Kurdish political party offices.

The deadliest day of insurgent attacks occurred in March 2004, when bombers killed at least 181 people in synchronized strikes at Shiite Muslim shrines in Baghdad and the southern city of Karbala.

Dealing with the insurgency will be a major responsibility of Iraq’s new government, but the political system is in flux.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi remains in charge as negotiations continue on a new presidency council, prime minister and Cabinet.

Allawi and one of his vice presidents, Ibrahim Jafari, the nominee of the slate that attracted the most votes in the election, are the leading candidates for prime minister. But the jockeying has dragged on for two weeks, and there is still no indication of when the new government will be seated.

In the meantime, Allawi’s government has continued its aggressive military and information campaign against the insurgency.

Almost every day, Iraqi authorities are heralding arrests of rebel leaders. On Sunday, they announced the detention of Hussein’s half-brother Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan Tikriti, who was handed over by officials in neighboring Syria. More than 8,000 insurgent suspects are in U.S. custody in Iraq.

Still, U.S. troops are killed almost every day in attacks, and Iraqi police and security officers are being slain at an even quicker pace. New Iraqi recruits, such as those killed Monday, are even more vulnerable as they line up for applications and physical examinations outside bases, police stations and clinics.

The U.S. says the key to stability is building up an effective Iraqi security force, but that remains a work in progress.

Insurgents have consistently targeted young men who line up around police and army recruitment centers. The aspiring recruits are much easier targets than U.S. troops, who have fortified bases, armored vehicles and sophisticated weaponry.

Although the attacks are meant to discourage Iraqis from joining the security forces, they apparently have not suppressed the number of young men willing to risk their lives to apply for the jobs. Many men are desperate for work as local economies remain listless.

The attacks on recruits are deepening Iraq’s religious and ethnic fault lines. The majority of new police and army applicants are Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds, groups that were repressed under Hussein and have found new political power in his wake.

Times staff writers Salar Jaff and Suhail Ahmad in Baghdad and special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Lethal attacks

The suicide car bombing outside a medical clinic in Hillah was one of the deadliest attacks in the two-year insurgency. Other deadly attacks in Iraq include:

Dec. 19, 2004: Car bombs tear through a Najaf funeral procession and Karbala’s main bus station, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than 120 in the two Shiite holy cities.

Sept. 30: A series of bombs in Baghdad kill 35 children and seven adults.

Sept. 14: A car bomb rips through a busy market near a Baghdad police headquarters, and gunmen open fire on a van carrying police home from work in Baqubah, killing at least 59.

July 28: A suicide car bomb devastates a busy street in Baqubah, killing 70 people.

April 21: Five blasts near police stations and a police academy in Basra kill at least 65.

March 2: Coordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortar rounds and planted explosives strike Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad, killing at least 181 and wounding 573.

Feb. 11: Suicide attacker blows up a car packed with explosives in a crowd of Iraqis in Baghdad, killing 47 people.

Feb. 10: Suicide bomber explodes a truckload of explosives in Iskandariya, killing at least 55.

Feb. 1: Twin suicide bombers kill 109 people in two Kurdish political party offices in Irbil.

Aug. 29, 2003: A car bomb explodes outside a mosque in Najaf, killing more than 100 people, including Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim.

*

Source: Associated Press