Iraqi leaders came under fire yesterday from enraged members of parliament (MPs) for failing to prevent a spate of bombings in Baghdad that killed 127 people, the third major set of attacks to hit the capital since August.
Tuesday’s blasts, which accounted for more dead in one day than violence throughout last month, undermined the government’s claims of improved security ahead of elections on March 7.
Lawmakers demanded that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his ministers answer for any failings that led to the attacks.
“MPs are angry, and the people are even more angry,” Mahmud Othman, an influential independent Kurdish lawmaker, said.
“We want to know what is going on, what is the security plan? Have they [the government] revised the plans since the explosions in August and October? What are the results of their investigations? Why do these explosions keep happening?” he asked.
As if to underline Othman’s concerns, a bomb in the predominantly Sunni Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah killed two people and wounded seven yesterday morning, an interior ministry official said. Also in Adhamiyah, a policeman was shot dead by a sniper.
Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, whose department is responsible for the police, said he welcomed being questioned by lawmakers over the attacks, which a senior security spokesman said bore “the touch of al-Qaeda.”
“I am ready to go to parliament on the condition that the session be public,” Bolani said.
Security was beefed up at checkpoints across Baghdad although roads were re-opened after many were shut on Tuesday in the wake of the five co-ordinated attacks.
The US, UN, Arab League and Britain led international condemnation of the bombings, with UN chief Ban Ki-moon calling them “horrendous” and “unacceptable.”
The attacks all struck Baghdad within minutes of each other on Tuesday morning.
One suicide attacker detonated his payload at a finance ministry office, another struck at a tunnel leading to the labor ministry and a third drove a four-wheel-drive car into a courthouse.
A fourth suicide bomber in a car struck a police patrol in Dora in southern Baghdad, while a car bomb hit interior ministry offices in the center of the capital.
An interior ministry official said 127 people had been killed and 448 wounded in the bombings.
Maliki called Tuesday’s attacks a “cowardly” attempt “to cause chaos ... and hinder the election,” and said they were deliberately timed to come after MPs on Sunday agreed on a new electoral law.
He blamed “foreign elements” who backed al-Qaeda, which previously carried out bloody co-ordinated vehicle bombings against government buildings in Baghdad in August and October, puncturing confidence in Iraq’s security forces.
The courthouse bombing destroyed a large part of the building, with falling concrete killing several people, emergency workers said.
Mangled wrecks of vehicles, some flipped on their roofs, lined the street opposite the courthouse, and several parked cars were crushed by collapsed blast walls.
Near the finance ministry, several houses were completely destroyed and a 2m-deep crater marked the site of the explosion.
Violence across Iraq dropped dramatically last month, with the fewest number of deaths in attacks recorded since the invasion in 2003.
Official figures showed a total of 122 people were killed last month.
Both the Baghdad government and the US military have warned of a rise in attacks in the run-up to the election, which authorities said on Tuesday would be held on March 7.
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