Dozens Killed in Wave of Iraqi Attacks

Car bombs ripped through Iraq, killing at least 45 people Monday, wounding more than 140 and increasing pressure on a new Iraqi government unable to stop a wave of insurgent violence.

In Baghdad’s Talibia neighborhood, fire coiled through the sky around lunchtime near a falafel restaurant. Students and scrap collectors were among the 10 dead and 107 wounded Iraqis, their bodies scattered amid 22 burned cars and broken bottles of yogurt. Family members called through the smoke for loved ones.

U.S.-led forces said at least 20 people were killed by two car bombs near a Shiite Muslim community center west of the northern city of Mosul in Tall Afar, according to news agencies.

And a car bomb Monday evening near a Shiite mosque in Mahmoudiya, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, killed five people and injured 19, including 11 children.

The attacks appeared to be more evidence of growing sectarian tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

They occurred as U.S. and Iraqi troops announced they had arrested more than 285 suspected militants in several areas in and around Baghdad, including Abu Ghraib and other havens of guerrilla activity. The sweeps, dubbed Operation Squeeze Play, turned up caches of antiaircraft rounds, grenades, Kalashnikov automatic rifles and $6 million in cash, the U.S. military said. The arrests could not be independently verified.

“It was the largest combined operation of its type in Baghdad,” said Army Sgt. 1st Class David Abrams of the 3rd Infantry Division.

A U.S. military official said about 20,000 U.S. troops backed 15,000 Iraqi soldiers and 13 special police battalions in the raids, which began Sunday and are expected to last several more days.

Since the new Iraqi government was sworn in less than a month ago, car bombs, insurgent ambushes and sectarian strife have battered the country, killing more than 500 people.

U.S. forces have been attempting to give the Iraqi military a greater role in fighting the insurgency. But many Iraqis doubt that the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari is capable of defeating militant groups that include former Sunni Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein and fighters loyal to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born extremist with links to Al Qaeda.

The violence Monday followed weekend moves by Sunni and Shiite leaders to reduce the bloodshed. Sunni Arab groups gathered in Baghdad to forge a unified strategy to find a political compromise with Shiites, and radical anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr sent a delegation to ask Sunni leaders to help end sectarian hostilities.

A senior American military official told reporters in a background briefing last week that U.S. and Iraqi forces were concentrating on breaking up insurgent activity in several Baghdad neighborhoods dominated by Sunni Arabs. The official said intelligence suggested that extremists were manufacturing car bombs in shops and warehouses in neighborhoods sympathetic to those seeking to undermine the new government.

“We’re looking for those predictable areas” where we can stop the insurgency, the official said.

Many bombings, the official said, are videotaped by insurgents and placed on the Internet to inspire young men to join Zarqawi’s and other militant groups. Recent discoveries have revealed details of suicide operations, the U.S. official said. He said a foot was found duct-taped to an accelerator pedal after a suicide bombing in Baghdad, which suggested that the driver might have been forced to participate and that the car was aimed at the target from close range.

Bomb blasts rocked other parts of Iraq during the last 36 hours. Eight people were killed south of Kirkuk in the city of Tuz Khurmatu when a car bomb exploded near a convoy carrying an Iraqi Kurd official, who survived the attack.

In Samarra, northwest of Baghdad, two car bombs detonated outside a fence near a U.S. military base. About the same time, a blast from a suicide bomber shook a police station and damaged several houses, killing two people and wounding 21.

U.S. and Iraqi forces responded to the attacks by sealing three entrances to the city.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced that three soldiers were killed Sunday in separate attacks in Mosul. Two other soldiers died during the weekend -- one killed by a car bomb in Tikrit, the other in a vehicle accident in Kirkuk. About 1,634 U.S. soldiers have died since the war began in March 2003, according to Associated Press, which tracks casualties.

The car bomb Monday at the Baghdad restaurant struck in a poor Shiite neighborhood of tea and nut shops. The Habaybna restaurant sold sandwiches and falafel. Until recently, it was frequented by police patrols.

“But we felt that it was too risky these days because the police are targets,” said Ali Saadi, one of the restaurant’s owners. “We asked them not to come so disaster wouldn’t happen. But it happened today.”

The blast left a crater 3 feet deep and 6 feet wide. Security forces closed off the block and fired into the air in an effort to keep anyone from driving down the road.

Hashim Abood Kadim, a transportation worker who was delivering pay packets to employees, had gone into the restaurant for lunch. He left the money in his car, where it was turned to ash by the explosion. He said no one was going to believe his story.

Ahmed Sadiq, a college student living in a nearby apartment, said he was preparing for an exam when the bomb went off. “The explosion rocked the building. Glass smashed. Doors broke. Dust and smoke everywhere. Injured people. Cars burning,” he said. “All of a sudden everything changed into a mess.”

An elderly woman, clad in black, roamed through the haze, repeating the question: “Did my son die?”

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Times staff writers Raheem Salam, Saif Rasheed and Suhail Ahmad in Baghdad, and special correspondents Ali Windawi in Kirkuk and Zaydan Khalaf in Samarra contributed to this report.