Baghdad car bombs kill 41

8.20am

BAGHDAD - A statement apparently from the Tawhid and Jihad group of al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said on Thursday it was behind three suicide attacks on a US military convoy and in Abu Ghraib, west of the Iraqi capital.

Insurgents detonated three car bombs near a US military convoy in Baghdad on Thursday, killing 41 people, 34 of them children rushing to collect sweets from US troops.

Hours earlier, a suicide bomber killed two Iraqi police and a US soldier by blowing up his car near a US checkpoint at a crowded intersection in Abu Ghraib. About 60 people, including women and children, were wounded.

A car bomb killed four people in the restive northern Iraq town of Tal Afar.

The attacks mentioned in the statement, which appeared in a format often used by the group led by Zarqawi, appeared to refer to those incidents.

The Baghdad bombs went off as crowds gathered to celebrate the opening of a new sewage plant. It was not clear if the event or the US convoy passing by was the target.

The first explosion was followed by two more that struck those who rushed to help the initial victims, residents said.

Ten US soldiers were wounded in the attack, two seriously, the military said. Iraq's Health Ministry confirmed 41 dead and 139 wounded, the vast majority children.

Instability is steadily mounting just weeks before the US presidential election in November and four months before Iraq is due to hold its own nationwide polls. Attacks on American troops have risen to around 80 a day from 40 a month ago.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, speaking in London, condemned the violence and pledged the election would go ahead on time.

Doctors at Yarmouk hospital struggled to treat the flood of victims, as pools of blood formed on the floor.

One boy lay swathed in bandages on a stretcher, his severed leg on a table beside him. Others were scarred by shrapnel, their clothes blown off by the force of the explosion.

The attack gouged a crater in the road and wrecked a dozen cars and a bus. US troops sealed off the area with tanks, and helicopters circled overhead.

Hours earlier, a suicide bomber had killed two Iraqi police and a US soldier by blowing up his car near a US checkpoint at a crowded intersection in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad. Around 60 people, including women and children, were wounded.

Another soldier was killed when a rocket hit a US logistics base near Baghdad. The confirmed deaths of the two soldiers raised to at least 802 the number of US troops killed in action since the start of the war.

In northern Iraq, another car bomb blew up near an Iraqi police convoy in the centre of Tal Afar, a rebellious town close to the Syrian border. Hospital officials said four civilians had been killed and 19 wounded. Five police were also hurt.

In rebel-held Falluja west of Baghdad, US forces destroyed a building they said was being used by fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose group is threatening to behead a British hostage. Iraqi doctors said at least three people were killed and eight wounded in the attack.

The strike was the latest in a series of almost daily attacks in Falluja intended to crush Zarqawi's network, which has claimed responsibility for many of Iraq's bloodiest suicide bombings and the killings of foreign captives.

Zarqawi's group beheaded Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley in September after US forces and the Iraqi government refused to release women prisoners.

The group says it will also kill the Briton Kenneth Bigley, 62, who was snatched along with the American pair.

On Wednesday, footage was released showing a haggard Bigley squatting chained in a cage, pleading for his life.

In a barely audible voice, Bigley said British Prime Minister Tony Blair was not doing enough to free him: "Tony Blair is a liar. He doesn't care about me. I'm just one person."

Blair has said Britain will not negotiate with the kidnappers, but told reporters on Wednesday: "They've made no attempt to have any contact with us at all. If they did make contact, it would be something we would immediately respond to."

Allawi said: "It is repugnant to take an innocent man such as Kenneth Bigley and to use him as a political pawn in this way."

Separately, a militant group said it had seized 10 people, including two Indonesian women, working for an electronics firm in Iraq, Al Jazeera television reported.

Lebanon said three of its nationals had been seized. It was not clear if it was part of the same incident.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq