Blasts Kill at Least 72 in Baghdad
236 Wounded in Closely Timed Explosions in Shiite Muslim Area

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 1, 2006 7:40 AM

BAGHDAD, Sept. 1 -- A string of closely timed explosions killed at least 72 people and wounded 236 in a Shiite Muslim area of Baghdad on Thursday night, one of the deadliest attacks in the capital in months despite the launch of a new security plan to stanch the sectarian carnage.

The blasts flattened a multistory apartment building, buried women and children under mounds of rubble and sent terrified shoppers fleeing out of a major bazaar, authorities and witnesses said. The death toll included 16 children, an Iraqi police official said Friday.

The booming explosions rang out within minutes of each other around 6:30 p.m. in the city's New Baghdad district. Interior ministry officials said Friday that they believed the blasts were caused by 12 to 18 rockets and a new type of highly flammable explosive. It was not clear whether the attack included car bombs and mortars as well.

The blasts struck the Nuairiya and Baladiyat neighborhoods. One senior Interior Ministry official said the attackers had rented homes in the heavily populated neighborhoods, planted large amounts of explosives within the buildings and then detonated them.

"This is a new terrorist invention," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The terrorist insurgents have found a new way of killing people."

Abu Zayneb, a 65-year-old landlord, recalled finding more than 20 corpses after an explosion on his block in the Baladiyat neighborhood shattered windows and blew off doors in his apartment building. At 10:20 p.m., he remained outside his home because he feared his building would collapse. The structure hit hardest by the blast was a three-story apartment building with 12 families that sits next to an Internet cafe that is usually packed at the hour the attack began.

"These are bad times," Zayneb said as he sat outside in the dark with his wife and relatives.

About five minutes after the attack on the apartment building, there was an explosion three blocks away between a primary school and a fire station in Baladiyat, said Abu Samar, 42, a taxi driver. At least three people were killed, and seven wounded, initial reports said. Five minutes after that attack, an explosion took place about a mile and a half away at a restaurant called the Arabian House, Abu Samar said.

At almost exactly the same time, witnesses said, several missiles or mortar shells slammed into the area around a huge market in the Nuairiya section of New Baghdad. The shelling completely collapsed a multistory apartment complex and also struck a nearby parking garage, residents said. Members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, were seen rescuing residents from the rubble.

Earlier in the day, at 12:45 p.m., a explosion that may have been from a car bomb detonated at a long gas line in New Baghdad. At least seven people were killed, and 18 wounded, police Col. Abdul Razaq Mahmoud said.

The violence in the capital coincided with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's statement Thursday that Iraqi forces were prepared to take control of the southern province of Dhi Qar in September from the U.S. military and its allies. It would be the second province in which Iraqis have taken full control of security; the British handed over Muthanna province in July.

"We hope that by the end of the year, our security forces will take over most of the Iraqi provinces," Maliki said in a televised news conference.

But in a sign of simmering tensions even in those parts of southern Iraq considered relatively calm, a substantial number of U.S. troops on Thursday reinforced the Polish forces that control Diwaniyah, the southern city where Iraqi troops battled Mahdi Army militiamen this week, the Reuters news agency reported.

In Baghdad, officials from Sadr's organization said Thursday that the Mahdi Army had clashed with U.S. forces in eastern Baghdad on Wednesday night. A U.S. military spokeswoman said she had no information about fighting in the area.

Sahib al-Amiri, a close aide to Sadr in Najaf, said the fighting began after U.S.-led forces tried to raid Sadr's offices in the Kamaliyah, Obaydi and Fedaliya areas of the capital.

The Mahdi Army members blocked roads with burning tires to prevent the forces from entering, he said. Then gunfire erupted.

Sheik Hassan al-Baghdadi, head of the Sadr office in Kamaliyah, said the mood in that neighborhood had been tense for two weeks, since U.S. forces began raiding Shiite mosques and harassing residents. He said the Americans had arrested 50 local leaders and members of the Mahdi Army.

Then, on Wednesday night, residents believed the U.S. military was about to seize a prominent local imam, Ahmed al-Aboudi of the Allawi Mosque in Obaydi. Aboudi said the Mahdi Army shot at U.S. troops to prevent his arrest and set an American vehicle on fire.

An Interior Ministry official said that dozens of Mahdi Army members were killed or wounded in the clashes and that five Iraqi army officers were killed and nine wounded. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the matter.

The American military on Thursday also announced the deaths of three service members on Wednesday. A Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 and a soldier assigned to the 1st Marine Logistics Group were killed in combat in Anbar province, and a soldier assigned to the 1st Brigade of the 34th Infantry Division was killed by a bomb in an unspecified location.

Correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer and special correspondents Naseer Nouri, Naseer Mehdawi and K.I. Ibrahim in Baghdad, special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.