SUICIDE BLAST KILLS AT LEAST 130 IN BAGHDAD

A dump truck hauling a ton of explosives hidden beneath boxes of food exploded in the center of a crowded Baghdad market Saturday, killing at least 130 people and injuring more than 300 in one of the deadliest blasts since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The attack, carried out by a suicide bomber, was designed to inflict a massive physical as well as psychological toll on a population haunted by a string of devastating strikes on other markets, including one Thursday that killed 73 people in the southern city of Hillah, and another in Baghdad last month that killed more than 80.

This one came in the evening, when the Sadriya market was crowded with after-work shoppers stocking up for dinner.

The truck’s deadly payload included landmines, ammunition, rockets, mortar rounds and other explosives, which erupted in a fireball and sent buildings crashing down on top of merchants and customers, said Maj. Gen. Jihad Jabiri of Iraq’s Interior Ministry.

The White House and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki denounced the attack, which was another reminder that their vows to counter rising bloodshed with increased troops seem to be having no deterrent effect. Ten other explosions Saturday, including eight car bombs in the northern city of Kirkuk and one south of Baghdad, killed at least three people. In addition, Iraqi police reported finding the bodies of 15 Iraqi men around Baghdad, all shot to death and apparent victims of sectarian warfare.

Shirwan Ridha, a taxi driver, was on his last run of the day and was standing near his minivan, waiting for it to fill with passengers, when the truck blew up about 300 feet from him.

“Huge fire rose to the sky. I was thrown into the air and then to the ground,” Ridha said. “I saw my car being destroyed, and the people inside it were shouting and screaming.”

Hamed Majed, a butcher who works in the market, said he was waiting on customers when he noticed a large yellow truck struggling to navigate through the narrow street, which was lined with cafes, food shops, and stores selling DVDs and computer goods. When bystanders asked the driver where he was trying to go, he “told them he was carrying food products for the shops in the area,” Majed said.

Seconds later, after the truck had gone about 500 feet down the road, it blew up.

“The explosion was the biggest one that I have seen in my life,” said Majed, adding that he has seen several in the area. On Dec. 2, the market was hit by a series of blasts that killed 51 people, and a June bombing killed four.

“The shop walls, ceiling and the refrigerators fell on us,” said Majed, 35, who suffered leg and head injuries. “The people rescued me

Bodies covered in white sheets lay on the floor outside the emergency room. Survivors also were being treated on the floors.

“The situation is catastrophic,” said one hospital official. “It is turmoil over here. The halls are filled with the blood of the injured and the dead. There are children, women and men.”

The explosion damaged 10 apartment buildings and left a ghastly landscape of human remains, food, shattered goods and meat that was sent hurtling from butchers’ stalls. Witnesses said fuel from generators added to the blast’s fiery aftermath. One man, wearing a black leather jacket, sobbed as he clung to a piece of blackened metal protruding from the ground.

In a statement, the White House called the attack an “atrocity.” Maliki, the Shiite Muslim prime minister, echoed the denunciation and blamed it on “Saddamists and Takfirists,” a reference to supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Sunni Muslim extremists. The attack was similar to others blamed on Sunni forces, who frequently have used car bombs against crowded, civilian targets in Shiite-dominated or mixed areas, such as Sadriya.

An appeal for peace

Just hours earlier, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s most revered Shiite cleric, had appealed for an end to sectarian bloodshed, saying it was the duty of good Muslims to discourage violence and dissension.

“We need to be more united than ever and keep ourselves away from sectarian tumult and sectarian clashes,” he said in a statement.

At the same time, a Sunni Arab militant group linked to Al Qaeda vowed to step up attacks across Iraq and claimed responsibility for the string of Kirkuk bombings.

The group said the blasts were part of an operation dubbed Karama, or dignity, to “eradicate the Americans and their followers.” The same group claimed responsibility for shooting down a U.S. military helicopter Friday north of Baghdad, killing two crew members.

Three more U.S. military deaths were reported Saturday by military officials -- two in fighting in Al Anbar province and another in a noncombat incident. According to the website icasualties.org, 3,097 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The first of 21,500 additional troops President Bush has ordered to Iraq have arrived to help quell the violence. But U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report Friday that the situation was so bleak that it would be well over a year before the country could be stabilized.

In their report, known as the National Intelligence Estimate, the agencies said the causes of violence in Iraq were so complicated that the term “civil war” was too simplistic to explain the situation.

Even if the U.S. troop increase were to reduce bloodshed, the report said, the Iraqi government would be “hard pressed” to bring political stability to the country in 18 months.

Car bombs in Kirkuk

The attacks Saturday in Kirkuk underscored the complexities of Iraq’s violence. The worst attack targeted offices of one of the main Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party, which favors autonomy for the oil-rich region. Two people were killed when a suicide bomber tried to ram a car into the building, Kirkuk Police Chief Shirko Shaker said.

In the next few hours, seven more car bombs and two other explosions rocked the city, injuring 28 people and prompting officials to place the area under a 4 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew.

A party official, Nashat Hassan, blamed the violence on forces opposed to efforts to return to the city thousands of Kurds displaced by Hussein as part of his plan to remake the city for Arabs. Since Hussein’s fall, Kurds have been moving back to Kirkuk and trying to reclaim their homes from Arabs.

A referendum is scheduled this year for Kirkuk residents to decide whether to join the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan, a move that could deny Iraq’s other regions much of the area’s oil wealth.

“Kirkuk is like a big barrel of gunpowder waiting to explode anytime now,” said a witness to the first bombing, Torhan Mustafa, 37.

“What kind of Islam is this?” said another Kirkuk resident, Bashar Hassan, 42. “They have created their own rules by killing innocent people from all backgrounds,” he said of the bombers. “May they go to hell.”

susman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baghdad and Kirkuk contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Lethal blasts

Among the deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein:

Feb. 1, 2004 -- 109 are killed by two suicide bombers in Irbil at the offices of the two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq.

Feb. 28, 2005 -- A suicide car bomb attack in Hillah, south of Baghdad, kills 125 and wounds 130.

July 16, 2005 -- A suicide bomber in a fuel truck near a Shiite mosque in the town of Musayyib, near Karbala, kills 98.

Sept. 14, 2005 -- A suicide bomber kills 114 and injures 156 in a Shiite district of Baghdad.

Sept. 29, 2005 -- 103 are killed in three coordinated car bomb attacks in the mixed Shiite and Sunni town of Balad.

Nov. 23, 2006 -- A series of suicide car bombs in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad kill at least 215 and wound about 250.

Jan. 22 -- A double car bombing at a busy market in central Baghdad kills 88 and wounds at least 168.

Saturday -- At another crowded market in the heart of Baghdad, a dump truck hiding a stash of explosives kills at least 130 and wounds more than 300.

Source: Reuters, Times reporting