Scores Dead As Baghdad Rocked By Series Of Massive Explosions – London Times

At least 95 people have been killed and hundreds injured by a series of co-ordinated bomb attacks in Baghdad today.

In the deadliest attack in Iraq this year, and the most audacious one in the capital for several more, truck and car bombs and mortar fire were directed against the main centres of power. The targets included the ministries of finance, foreign affairs, health and housing, as well as the Parliament and Cabinet buildings. Also hit was a checkpoint on the approach roads to the fortified Green Zone.

“95 people were killed and 563 wounded,” an Interior Ministry official said this afternoon. The largest explosion was a truck bomb across the street from the Foreign Ministry, just outside the Green Zone, which is reported to have killed up to 59 people and injured 250. The force of the blast flattened the compound wall and blew concrete slabs off the front of the 10-storey block, killing people working inside the building and devastating cars and bystanders for hundreds of metres around.

It left a crater in the road three metres deep and 10 metres wide, full of dozens of burned and twisted cars and a few charred bodies. Other nearby buildings were also damaged, including the Parliament which lies inside the Green Zone. Water tanks collapsed on nearby houses, sending water gushing through people’s homes.

“I was in my home with my family when the roof collapsed on us,” said Hamid, 46, who lives a few hundred metres away from the Foreign Ministry. “The government promised us security would return but where is the security?”

Blast walls surrounding the Foreign Ministry compound, which might have limited the devastation, were removed two months ago. The move was part of a process of “normalisation” by the Iraqi government, after US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities on June 30.

Nobody has so far claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, but it is likely to have been carried out by Sunni extremists trying to undermine the Shia-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in order to re-ignite the sectarian warfare of two years ago.

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