BAGHDAD, Aug. 17 -- In the hours after a triple car bombing in the Iraqi capital Wednesday, state television broadcast a montage of faces of random children -- some appearing solemn, some smiling, some slyly glancing up at the camera. In the background, mournful music swelled, and the faces gave way to the bright flash of a car bomb, shown in slow motion.
"They were young but were turned to pieces of flesh," the singers lamented, as the network then broadcast footage of previous attacks showing limp children, wailing men and distraught women dressed in black abayas pushing through crowds. "Oh, oh Iraq, the land of bloodshed."
The deaths of at least 43 Iraqis in the three car bombings Wednesday brought an outpouring of grief and anger rarely shown on state television, as broadcasts for the first time focused solely on the violence and call-in shows allowed citizens to voice their sorrow and frustration. The attacks targeted a police station, a crowded bus terminal and a hospital where many of the victims had been taken. Most of the victims were civilians.
"When will Iraqi blood stop being spilled?" asked a caller identified only as Um Hassan, or Mother of Hassan. As she spoke, the footage from the bombings hours earlier showed a man raising the arm of a lifeless boy.
The killings were among 54 reported across the country Wednesday, including the deaths of two U.S. soldiers in separate attacks.
In Baghdad, weeping families drove away from morgues with the coffins of loved ones killed in the blasts strapped to the rooftops of their cars. Other families searched burned hulks of buses for signs of the missing. As Iraqiya TV broadcast the scene, angry, weeping callers dialed in to the station, using the country's now ubiquitous cell phones. Call-waiting signals beeped on-air through their sobs. Martial footage of Iraq's new military and music videos of past bombings played throughout the day.
Coming in the middle of high-stakes talks among Shiite Arab, Sunni Arab and Kurdish leaders over the country's new constitution, reaction to the bombings quickly became politicized.
"We put responsibility on the occupation forces," Jaleel Musawi, a spokesman for Moqtada Sadr, a rebellious Shiite cleric and political leader, said in a statement. It accused U.S.-led forces of failing to turn over full intelligence responsibility to Iraqi forces and for allowing detained insurgents to go free.
The Iraq Islamic Party, representing the mainstream of the Sunni minority from which many insurgents are drawn, condemned the bombings, as did Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was in Baghdad to review the U.S.-led effort to quell the revolt against the U.S. presence and the government it supports.
The bombings targeted a neighborhood in eastern Baghdad where an open-air bus terminal is located, a place where crowds gather to travel to and from the predominantly Shiite south.
Witnesses said the bombs went off in the space of a half-hour. The first, a suicide car bomb, went off outside a police station across the street from the bus terminal, witnesses said.
Ten minutes later, another suicide attacker drove a car into the terminal and blew it up, according to Capt. Ibaa Abdul Hakim of the Iraqi army. Most of the deaths occurred there, Hakim said.
