Street turns 'swimming pool of blood'

Baghdad: Car bombs killed nearly 200 people in Baghdad yesterday in the deadliest attacks in the city since US and Iraqi forces launched a security crackdown aimed at halting the country's slide into civil war.

One car bomb near a market in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim Sadriya district killed 140 people and wounded 150, police said.

"The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood," Ahmad Hamid, a shopkeeper near the scene, said.

Wednesday's attacks killed a total of 191 people and wounded 250, police said. Witnesses said many of the dead were women and children.

The apparently coordinated attacks - there were five within a short space of time - occurred hours after Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki said Iraq would take security control of the whole country from foreign forces by the end of the year.

Al Maliki is under growing pressure to say when foreign soldiers will leave, but the attacks in mainly Shiite areas of Baghdad underscored the huge challenges for Iraq's security forces in taking charge of overall security from more than 150,000 US and British troops.

"I saw dozens of dead bodies. Some people were burned alive inside minibuses. Nobody could reach them after the explosion," said a Reuters witness at Sadriya, describing scenes of mayhem at an intersection where the bomb exploded near a market.

"Women were screaming and shouting for their loved ones who died," said the witness who did not wish to be identified, adding many of the dead were women and children.

One man waving his arms in the air screamed hysterically: "Where's Maliki? Let him come and see what is happening here."

US and Iraqi forces began deploying thousands more troops onto Baghdad's streets in February.

Sectarian death squad killings have declined, but car bombs are much harder to stop, US military officials say.

The bombings could inflame sectarian passions in Baghdad, especially among the Mehdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, which has kept a low profile so far during the two-month-old Baghdad security offensive.

Al Qaida is blamed for most of the major bombings targeting Shiites in Iraq and there are fears the Mehdi Army may take to the streets to retaliate.

Epicentre of violence

The attacks came several hours after Al Maliki again appealed for reconciliation between majority Shiites and once-dominant minority Sunni Arabs who form the backbone of the insurgency.

"There is no magic solution to put out the fire of sectarian sedition that some are trying to set up, especially Al Qaida," Al Maliki said in a speech made on his behalf before the attacks.

Among the other attacks yesterday, police said a suicide car bomber killed 35 people at a checkpoint in Sadr City, stronghold of the firebrand cleric Al Sadr.

In a speech at a ceremony marking the handover of southern Maysan province from British to Iraqi control, Al Maliki said three provinces in the autonomous Kurdistan region would be next, followed by Karbala and Wasit provinces.

Gates' opinion

Iraq failure 'will be felt first in region before US'

Failure in Iraq will unleash sectarian strife and extremism and will be felt first in the Middle East, visiting US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday.

Speaking to a US Chamber of Commerce luncheon on the third day of his Middle East tour, Gates exhorted Arab countries to use their influence to dampen the insurgency and encourage political reconciliation in Iraq.

"Whatever disagreements we might have over how we got to this point in Iraq, the consequences of a failed state in Iraq - of chaos there - will adversely impact the security and prosperity of every nation in the Middle East and Gulf region," he said.

Gates also said that Iran and Syria need to become part of the solution by reducing the violence and helping promote reconciliation in Iraq.