A suicide bomber pulled his minibus into a busy market yesterday, lured laborers onboard with the promise of jobs and then blew himself up, killing at least 59 people in one the bloodiest attacks in Iraq this year.
The blast in the Shiite city of Kufa wounded 132 people and sparked clashes between police and angry protesters, dealing a fresh blow to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's efforts to promote national reconciliation and avoid a slide toward civil war.
Maliki, a Shiite who has offered a dialogue with some Sunni insurgent groups since he took office in April, pledged to "hunt down and punish" those responsible.
Police at the scene were pelted with rocks by angry crowds, many of whom demanded that militias loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr take over security in Kufa, near the holy city of Najaf, 160km south of Baghdad.
The blast occurred about 7:30am across the street from the gold-domed mosque in Kufa, police Captain Nafie Mohammed said.
It happened shortly after the minibus had pulled out of the market with a group of laborers.
"He came asking for workers. When they boarded the minibus the vehicle exploded," a witness said.
Protesters gathered around the blackened mangle of vehicles. Blood-stained clothes were scattered amid the debris.
"We want the Mehdi Army to protect us. We want Moqtada's army to protect us," a woman dressed in a black abaya screamed.
Others chanted to the police: "You are traitors! You are not doing your job! American agents!"
Police then fired automatic rifles into the air to disperse the crowds and confused scenes ensued. Some civilians, who appeared to be Sadr followers, were seen carrying weapons.
"It is very chaotic now. The police are shooting in the air and the crowds are running," a reporter at the scene said. "Ambulances are racing around town."
A man with a bandage on his head in a Kufa hospital said: "Where are our human rights?"
The blast was one of the bloodiest since Maliki's national unity government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds took office in April on pledges to rein in sectarian bloodshed.
Violence between majority Shiites and Sunnis, dominant under former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, but now the backbone of an insurgency against the US-sponsored political process, has pushed Iraq close to civil war and complicated US plans to withdraw troops.
Earlier this month, a suicide truck bomb ripped through Baghdad's eastern Sadr city slum, killing at least 62 people. The area is a stronghold of Sadr, who sometimes preaches in Kufa and is a rising political figure in Maliki's government.
The attack came a day after gunmen killed more than 50 people in Mahmudiya, near Baghdad.
Najaf Governor Assad Abu-Kalal blamed the Kufa attack on the "criminal Baathists and terrorists of Mahmoudiya."
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