Rage Explodes After Another Baghdad Blast

Although no bloodier, Monday's blast in the capital carried significantly more political meaning than its predecessors. It erupted from the point where Saadoun Street flows into Liberation Square, a central Baghdad traffic circle laden with the history of modern Iraq, from heroic sculptures commissioned by the country's former dictator, Gen. Abdul Karim Qassem, after he overthrew the British-imposed monarchy in 1958 to the spot where, one decade and several coups later, Saddam Hussein had 14 Iraqi Jews hanged on espionage charges.

U.S. soldiers, backed by Bradley Fighting Vehicles, had returned and closed off the area by midday, while forensics specialists combed through the charred wreckage. The cordon caused a giant traffic jam as cars spilled off Jumhuriyah Bridge into the square. And it presented passing Iraqis with the spectacle of four U.S. soldiers -- kneeling in the unforgiving sun, their M-16s ready, concertina wire coiled in front of them -- just under the looming panel of carvings that Qassem ordered up to depict Iraq's emergence from foreign domination.

Moreover, the mob of young men who shouted their contempt and anger at the United States, lumping it with Israel as an unredeemable enemy, brought to the capital's center a display of anti-occupation fury previously seen only in outlying trouble spots such as Fallujah, 35 miles to the west, or Najaf, about 90 miles to the south. Men shouting at the top of their voices swore they had seen an Israeli flag in one of the vehicles shortly after the bomb detonated.

Many of the youths who took part, Iraqi witnesses said, came from the nearby Thieves Market, where street vendors, mostly dispossessed Shiites, line the sidewalk to sell their wares from makeshift tables. Poor and young, they have formed a ready pool of supporters for Sadr who clash nearly every day with occupation troops, particularly in the Sadr City slum of eastern Baghdad, and are eager to believe the worst about U.S. intentions here.

"It's all the Americans' fault," shouted Amid Abdi, who displayed a bloody hand he said was wounded when the bomb went off as he walked nearby.

As he talked, a teenage boy, his head shaved close like that of a Marine, stepped up. "We will slaughter them," he said, drawing his fingers across his Adam's apple.

"The bombings happening in Iraq these days are part of the U.S. plan," affirmed Wasam Basim, 24, who works for the Facilities Protection Service, a U.S.-financed corps assigned to prevent attacks such as Monday's. "They are doing these bombings to show the world that Iraq is an unsafe country and they have to stay longer to maintain security. Also, they want to find an excuse not to hand over full sovereignty to the Iraqi government."

Ali Hussein, 32, a member of the same service, accused Iraqi police of paying more attention to the foreigners killed and wounded by the explosion than the Iraqis lying nearby.

"The police are traitors," he declared. "They moved the bodies of the foreigners and left the Iraqis lying in the street. They should all be killed. We have to burn these cars. We have to show them what it means to work against Iraq. This time we'll burn the cars empty. Next time, we'll burn them with their occupants inside."

Allawi, along with Interior Minister Falah Naqib and Defense Minister Hazem Shalan, blamed the bombings and assassinations that have hit Baghdad in recent weeks in part on Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused by the United States of being an al Qaeda terrorist leader fomenting violence against the United States in Iraq.

"The terrorist attack today in the Saadoun neighborhood and the assassinations in the last few days show that the terrorists are trying to stop the sovereignty handover process," Allawi declared. "Zarqawi and his followers, along with others, are working hard to prevent this process."

Shalan suggested things might get better after Iraqis take over security control from the 138,000 U.S. and about 20,000 allied troops. "Everybody knows that the coalition forces are handling security now," he said. "From now on, you will witness a change that will stop these terrorists."