56 Iraqis Die in Attacks on Marketplace

Coordinated attacks Sunday in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in south Baghdad killed at least 56 people and wounded 148, local officials said.

The attacks on a market in Zafaraniya included a barrage of mortar rockets, a car bomb and a suicide bomber on a bicycle, police reported.

Elsewhere, insurgents appeared to strike a blow to efforts to bolster security in the restive western city of Fallouja, where hundreds of newly recruited police officers failed to show up for work Sunday after insurgents circulated pamphlets threatening officers, said police officials.

“We will kill all the policemen infidels,” read the pamphlets, “whether or not they quit or are still in their jobs.”

Fallouja Police Lt. Mohammed Alwan said that the force, which he estimated had increased to more than 2,000, had now shrunk to 100. He said insurgents had killed dozens of policemen in their homes and also attacked relatives in a weeks-long intimidation campaign.

A Fallouja police major who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals said that at least 1,400 policemen had left their jobs since Friday, 400 of them above the rank of officer.

“During the last three months more than 100 policemen were killed here,” including a number of senior officers, the major said.

Marine Lt. Lawton King, who is stationed in Fallouja, called those figures “inaccurate.” He said 32 police officers had been assassinated since January and that “substantially fewer than the exaggerated 1,400” officers had failed to report for work.

The Marines stationed in the western province of Al Anbar, the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, have struggled to recruit police officers in Fallouja, which was the scene of major clashes in 2004 and has since remained under a strict Marine cordon and curfew. Some units were recently moved to nearby Ramadi during the same period that Fallouja officials say insurgents launched their campaign.

A prominent Shiite militia leader, citing U.S. and Iraqi forces’ inability to provide security, called Sunday for the creation of “popular committees” to guard neighborhoods.

During a televised debate on an Arabic satellite channel, Hadi Amri, a leader of the Badr Brigade, a powerful Shiite militia that has been accused of running death squads within Iraq’s national police forces, said paramilitary groups would persist until Iraq’s security forces were able to protect the nation’s citizens from terrorism.

“I talked to the Americans two years ago and told them if the security is not resolved there will be hundreds of militias, and now it has happened,” said Amri, who is also a lawmaker. “Now all the guards of officials are militias, all the guards of parties and movements are militias, all the guards of companies are militias, all the guards of ministers ... are militias.”

U.S. soldiers raided the Iraqi health minister’s offices Sunday and arrested seven of his bodyguards, according to ministry officials. U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said the raid was conducted in response to a tip that six Iraqis had been kidnapped and taken to the Health Ministry building. Johnson said the soldiers found no abductees.

Sunni Arab leaders have recently alleged that Shiite militiamen have kidnapped Sunnis visiting relatives at the hospital or recovering fallen loved ones at the Baghdad morgue.

The Health Ministry is widely viewed as being under the control of the followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, who heads an influential political movement and Al Mahdi militia.

Sadr followers condemned the raid as another act of provocation by the U.S. military, which drew harsh criticism for raids last week in Sadr City, an Al Mahdi stronghold in Baghdad.

Nasir Saidi, a Sadr associate, called the Health Ministry raid a “barbarian and unsound act.”

“We have had enough of such aggression against us,” Saidi said. “Everybody knows that the Sadr movement is participating in the political process -- but it will never deal with the occupiers. We hope they will not force us to go in a different direction.”

U.S. and Iraqi forces have increased operations in the capital in an effort to reduce sectarian violence, which many officials believe has eclipsed the insurgency as the main problem in Baghdad, which reported more than 1,800 violent deaths in July.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s office announced that police had disrupted a six-member insurgent cell near Babylon allegedly plotting to kidnap and kill members of his family.

In southwest Baghdad, gunmen killed three men in separate incidents.

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Time staff writers Saif Hameed in Baghdad and Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf, Iraq, and special correspondents in Baghdad, Fallouja and Ramadi contributed to this report.