Dozens Killed By Attacks in Commercial Area
By Ernesto Londoño and Naseer Mehdawi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 19, 2007
BAGHDAD, Feb. 18 -- After a brief respite from carnage in Baghdad, the city's skyline on Sunday once again featured a robust, gray cloud billowing slowly from a devastated commercial area that had been bombed numerous times before.
Two car bombs, placed a few blocks apart in the New Baghdad neighborhood of the capital, exploded in quick succession at 3:30 p.m. An Iraqi official put the preliminary death toll at 40. Other officials quoted by Iraqi television and news services said that at least 60 people were killed and more than 100 injured.
"It was complete devastation," said Abu Noor, 40, a calligrapher who was in his third-story apartment in the commercial district when he heard the blasts. "You could see people melting in their cars."
Some residents wondered whether the latest bombings were a response from insurgents to reports from Iraqi officials that a newly launched Baghdad security plan had gained a foothold in this battered city.
"Those people might be challenging the security plan," said Faris Salman, 30, a mechanic who works at one of the many spare-parts shops in the targeted area. "They are showing that they have the strength, that they are able to target innocent and poor people. As long as you say we are successful with the security plan, we are also showing we are successful in killing innocent people."
The bombing was the most lethal attack in the country since the security plan was officially launched Wednesday, and it came as thousands of troops, including many American soldiers, are being deployed to inner-city security stations. The plan, designed by Iraqi officials, was intended to make the country inhospitable to violent extremist groups by stepping up patrols in neighborhoods, cracking down on unlawfully possessed weapons and tightening security along Iraq's borders.
The first bomb exploded across the street from the Baiydhaa movie theater, a once-popular cinema where projectors have not been turned on for months.
Salman had just finished working on two cars when the shock wave from the blast hurled him to the ground.
"I stood and I saw the chaos," he said. Then he noticed blood streaming from his left shoulder and waist.
He staggered to a nearby school, where his uncle works as a security guard. The two men took a cab to Ibn al-Nafis Hospital, where emergency room doctors dashed from patient to patient, leaving bloody footprints on the floor, Salman said.
The second bomb exploded about 100 yards away, in a narrow street dotted with appliance stores that caught fire. Abbas Hadi, 42, a travel agent, was in a minibus on his way home from work when he felt "the earth shaking" under his seat.
"It was raining things and metal parts," he said.
U.S. soldiers stationed at a nearby police station rushed to the sites, where buildings and vehicles were ablaze.
With ambulances in short supply, vegetable vendors emptied their carts, dumping lettuce heads and tomatoes on the ground.
"They loaded their wooden carts with wounded and dead bodies," Hadi said. Trails of blood showed the routes vendors had taken. "There were dozens of those red tracks," he said.
Another image stuck in Hadi's mind: that of a weeping man in gray trousers and a white, blood-stained T-shirt collecting body parts in a plastic bag, apparently oblivious to the policemen asking civilians to leave the area.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the attack, saying in a statement that "terrorists and criminals who didn't like to see the appearances of life returning back to Baghdad's streets" were targeting innocent civilians.
The bombs exploded in a predominantly Shiite area, but the site is also the intersection of two major roads, which makes it difficult to characterize the bombings as a straightforward sectarian attack.
The U.S. military announced in a statement that two American soldiers were slain in separate attacks Saturday.
Maliki and other Iraqi officials had spoken enthusiastically about the initial lull in violence that had followed the formal launch of the security plan. In a news conference Saturday, a spokesman for the commander of the effort said attacks had dropped by 80 percent since the security measures began. The news conference was held shortly before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a brief visit to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, where she met with Iraqi leaders and pledged her support for the plan.
On Sunday, Iraqi officials took reporters on a tour to see what they described as successful efforts to return people to newly secured neighborhoods after they had fled their homes fearing for their safety.
U.S. officials have spoken more cautiously than their Iraqi counterparts about the plan's prospects for success. They have said a sudden drop in violence is unrealistic in a country where many enemies are being targeted by security forces of dubious loyalty, skill and strength.
"These terrorists thrive on fear and insecurity," the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in a statement. "But they will not prevail. Make no mistake; heinous acts such as these will only serve to galvanize Iraqi forces and their coalition partners who are continuing to move forward in securing Baghdad."
On Saturday, the U.S. military also characterized the first few days of the security plan in positive terms, saying in a statement
that security patrols had been doubled in the past week. "Nearly 20,000 security patrols were conducted this week," said Lt. Col. Scott R. Bleichwehl, a military spokesman. "Since the operation started, there has been a reduction in the number of attacks across the Iraqi capital."
Hadi, the travel agent, found another minibus minutes after the bombings and resumed his commute home.
Watching streams of smoke from each of the bombing sites rise into one thick cloud, he leaned toward a colleague sitting next to him.
"I was expecting this," he said. "No one will be able to stop the terrorists in Iraq. I did not believe in this security plan."
Special correspondents Naseer Nouri and Waleed Saffar contributed to this report.
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