SUICIDE BLAST KILLS DOZENS AT UNIVERSITY IN BAGHDAD

A suicide bomber pushed past guards at a crowded college campus Sunday and set off a thunderous blast that killed at least 40 Iraqis, most of them female students waiting in line to enter classrooms for midterm exams.

The attack was the second in recent weeks to target the mainly Shiite Muslim Mustansiriya University.

Even as rescue workers mopped up blood from the college grounds, the Iraqi government insisted that the U.S.-Iraqi security plan launched nearly two weeks ago was succeeding.

But radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose followers virtually control the campus, denounced the plan as a failure and said Iraqi government troops and police should take charge of security and that “invaders,” a reference to U.S. troops, should leave.

Sadr’s comments suggested that he is fed up with the plan, which aims to put thousands more U.S. and Iraqi troops on Baghdad’s streets. The anti-American firebrand had agreed to cooperate with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki by drawing down his militia forces, and the result may have been evident in the decreased number of Sunni victims of Shiite death squads found along Baghdad’s streets in recent weeks.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was similar to others on mainly Shiite targets, such as crowded markets, which have appeared designed by Sunni insurgents to inflict maximum suffering.

Mustansiriya University’s main campus and its satellite colleges are sandwiched between Shiite-dominated Sadr City and a mainly Sunni area. Students say Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia virtually controls the university, enforcing conservative dress codes for women and canceling classes to honor Shiite martyrs.

The militia’s presence has made Mustansiriya a sectarian battleground. On Jan. 16, at least 70 students were killed when two car bombs exploded almost simultaneously on the university’s main campus, about a mile and a half from the College of Business Administration and Economics, where Sunday’s attack took place.

The bomber, identified as a woman, struck at an especially busy time Sunday at the college gate. Two lines, one for female students and one for male students, had formed as students waited to be checked by guards, who patted them down, looked inside their bags and confiscated cellphones and other items that could hide explosives.

As they were being allowed in for 1 p.m. midterms, other students who had sat for morning exams were filtering out or milling in the campus courtyard comparing notes.

One person resisted being searched. The guards became agitated.

Luay Sadek, a business management student who is a Shiite, heard yelling near the gate and moved closer to see what was happening. As he did, the bomb detonated, sending shrapnel and flames across the campus. Sadek saw a wall of fire and the bodies of guards and classmates flying into the air. “Those are the same people I talk to every day,” said Sadek, who woke up in Imam Ali Hospital after having lost consciousness.

The words of the wounded underscored the despair and bewilderment of both Sunni and Shiite students as their attempts to do something as routine as take midterms were upended by sectarian and ideological extremism.

“The last thing I expected was that students would be attacked, especially because we are in the middle of a residential area,” said Saad Abdalla, a Sunni economics student, who suffered burns and shrapnel wounds to his head. “We felt safe, especially after the application of the new security plan.”

Evidence of the blast’s ferocity could even be found in tree branches, where a woman’s scarf fluttered in the afternoon breeze. Some victims’ body parts landed in nearby shops. Sobbing survivors clung to one another and used their clothing to mop up blood in the courtyard, which was littered with shredded notebooks and shoes. At least 55 people were wounded.

“What was really painful to me is seeing the female students’ bodies torn apart and thrown here and there,” said Ismaeel Ubaidi, who owns a small market about 300 feet from the campus gate. Ubaidi said students had been clustered in small groups when the “indescribable detonation” shattered the calm.

Most of the victims were young women because the female students’ line was far longer than the men’s, said student Muaataz Jawad, explaining that it had taken longer to check the women because of their purses.

“There were bodies scattered in pools of blood near the gate,” said Jawad, a Shiite accounting major who just 10 minutes before the blast had been joking with guards at the gate. After the bombing, Jawad rushed to check on them, but they had died, their bodies so mutilated he could barely recognize them.

“I saw female students weeping and wailing for the friends they lost and male students who cried harder. This is the first time I see men cry like this,” he said. “I prayed to God that either he lift this ordeal or take my soul. It was really painful seeing all this chaos.”

Iraqi police confirmed witness accounts that the bomber was a woman.

Despite two consecutive days of bloodshed -- a bomb in a village west of Baghdad on Saturday killed at least 37 Iraqis -- the Iraqi government insisted that the security plan was working, albeit gradually.

“We have got a reduction in violence. And we have got a huge, considerable reduction in the execution-style killings,” Iraq’s national security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie, said on CNN. Rubaie was referring to the daily count of bullet-riddled corpses picked up in and around Baghdad, most of them victims of Shiite death squads.

Since the security plan officially began Feb. 13 with the introduction of new checkpoints and thousands more Iraqi and U.S. troops, the number of sectarian executions has averaged less than 20 a day, according to an analysis of morgue and police statistics compiled by The Times. In the weeks before the plan took effect, the average was often more than 30. Police in Baghdad said they found 15 bodies Sunday.

In the northern city of Mosul, however, police said 24 bodies had been found Sunday, a sign of the difficulties security forces are likely to face elsewhere as they concentrate on pacifying Baghdad. Two more bodies, both beheaded, were found in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Rubaie, repeating what U.S. and Iraqi officials have said since the plan was launched, said, “We should look into this plan in terms of months.

“Probably we will see a tangible success or measurable success by Easter time.”

But Sadr, in a statement read by an associate, rejected any idea of the plan succeeding and said foreign forces had turned Iraq into “a core for terror.”

Sadr’s whereabouts remain a mystery. U.S. officials say he fled to Iran before the security plan was launched, but Sadr’s associates say he is in Iraq. The cleric has not appeared in public in weeks.

The university bombing came amid a string of smaller attacks across Iraq. Mortar fire and car bombings killed at least three civilians in Baghdad, and a roadside bomb in Kirkuk killed one person.

Also Sunday, the Iraqi government announced that President Jalal Talabani had been flown to Jordan after falling ill with “malaise” as a result of overwork. A brief statement from Talabani’s office said that doctors had recommended additional tests but that there was no cause for concern.

U.S. officials said the military had killed two suspected terrorists and captured a senior Al Qaeda leader on Sunday during a raid in Mosul. Five other suspected insurgents were also detained in the raid, the military said in a statement.

Fifteen other suspected insurgents were killed during a recent three-day operation in Salman Pak, a volatile area southeast of Baghdad.

susman@times.com

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Times staff writer Saif Hameed and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.