The explosion of a power generator, possibly triggered by a bomb, at a busy market in Iraq’s southern oil hub Basra on Saturday killed dozens of people and wounded scores more, morgue and security sources said.
“We received 43 corpses, and 185 people have been wounded,” said Riyadh Abdelamir, director of Basra province’s health department, adding that women and children were among the wounded in Saturday’s attacks.
Ali al-Maliki, the head of the Basra provincial council’s security committee, yesterday said the blasts had been caused by coordinated attacks — a double car bombing and a third roadside bomb which caused a large fire in crowded Ashaar market in the center of Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.
The city’s police command had late on Saturday attributed the explosion to the short-circuit of a communal power generator.
Firefighters and ambulances rushed to the scene, the central al-Ashaar market in one of Iraq’s largest cities. Fierce flames and smoke could be seen.
“As a lawmaker from Basra, I hold the military and police leadership responsible for the blood that has been shed,” lawmaker Hussein Talib said at the scene.
Oil-rich Iraq has remained in a political void since an inconclusive March 7 election while Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political factions try to sort out a coalition government.
Politicians and security officials say insurgents appear to be trying to take advantage of the power vacuum.
Overall violence has ebbed since the peak of sectarian warfare in 2006-2007 but bombings and suicide attacks still occur regularly. Iraq has the world’s third-largest oil reserves and most of its exports come from oilfields located around Basra.
A man at the scene of the explosions blamed politicians, who have failed in their attempts to form a government in the five months since the election.
“They are all fighting over their chairs. Is that what they want? Explosions in Basra, another one in Mosul. Oh my God, why is this happening?” the man, Furat Yasir, said.
More than a dozen people were killed in other attacks across Iraq on Saturday, including five policemen in clashes with gunmen in Baghdad during a raid on a suspected bomb workshop.
In the Baghdad shootout, police who were tipped off by a carjacking trailed the suspects to a house in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Saidiya, where they came under fire from an unknown number of gunmen.
The shooting lasted for hours until daybreak, when the gunmen slipped away through a rear entrance, according to two Baghdad police officers and an Iraqi interior ministry official, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.
Also inside the house, police said they found a cache of bombs, chemicals and other devices to make explosives.
A minibus packed with explosives was also found in the garage, officials said, adding that there was a trail of fresh blood in the house from at least one of the gunmen.
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