Iraqi security forces faced charges of negligence yesterday after insurgents killed 119 people in a devastating wave of attacks in five cities the previous day, Iraq’s bloodiest this year.
About five dozen bombings and shootings shattered a lull in violence as Iraq moved closer to forming a government more than two months after a general election seen as crucial to US combat troops leaving the country by Aug. 31.
The government pinned the blame on al-Qaeda, while the Iraqi deputy interior minister announced that an inquiry was under way and appeared to concede that the nation’s security apparatus had been comprehensively undermined.
PHOTO: REUTER
“There were security violations because of weak inspection measures,” at checkpoints, Hussein Ali Kamal told the Bayan newspa per, which is close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
“Security leaders will be held accountable for these incidents and will find out who was negligent,” he said.
Monday’s deadliest attack saw two suicide car bombs detonate simultaneously in the car park of a textiles factory in the Shiite central city of Hilla, as workers boarded buses to go home.
A third car bomb exploded minutes later and a fourth explosion engulfed emergency workers who were treating victims at the scene.
Hospital officials in Hilla said yesterday that the toll had risen to 53 people killed and 157 wounded.
The toll from three car bombs which struck two markets in the southern port city of Basra also rose — to 30 killed and 223 wounded — security officials said.
Attacks also targeted security checkpoints in Baghdad, a Shiite mosque in Suwayrah, 60km southeast of the capital, the former Sunni insurgent bastion of Fallujah, in Iskandiriyah, south of Baghdad, and near Tarmiyah, north of the Iraqi capital.
In total 119 people were killed and more than 500 wounded, the highest death toll since Dec. 8 when 127 people were murdered in five vehicle-borne bombs in Baghdad.
The US led international condemnation of the violence, saying opponents of progress in Iraq were making “one last charge” at fomenting chaos.
In Baghdad, Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari said al-Qaeda was to blame for Monday’s attacks — 59 in total, according to the interior ministry — in what amounted to retaliation from the jihadist network.
“These bombings carry the fingerprints of al-Qaeda,” he said.
Askari was referring to an Iraqi-US military operation last month that killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, political leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian militant and the group’s self-styled “minister of war.”
“It is logical that al-Qaeda commits more than one terrorist attack in different cities ... to send a message that says: ‘We can commit attacks in different areas at the same time.’”
The relentless cascade of bombings and shootings — hitting at least 10 cities and towns as the day unfolded — raised questions about whether Iraqi security forces can protect the country as the US prepares to withdraw half of its remaining 92,000 troops in Iraq over the next four months.
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