Three powerful coordinated suicide attacks in the central Iraqi city of Baqubah killed at least 29 people and wounded 42 yesterday, just days before nationwide parliamentary elections.
The blasts struck a government building, a nearby traffic intersection and, later, the hospital where the wounded were being ferried, in the deadliest single attack to hit Iraq in nearly a month.
The attacks comes despite heightened security across the country ahead of Sunday’s vote and after the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, threatened to disrupt the election by “military means.”
“The three bombings killed 29 people,” a security official from Baqubah operations command said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Two near-simultaneous suicide vehicle bombs hit the city’s provincial housing department’s offices and a nearby intersection at around 9:30am, while a third person later blew himself up at Baqubah’s main hospital.
“The suicide bomber tried to blow himself up against the police chief when he came to see the wounded in the hospital,” the official said.
Police chief Major General Abdul Hussein al-Shimmari escaped unharmed but a number of his personal security team were wounded.
The first vehicle crashed through the entrance to the provincial housing department’s compound, which sits next to a police station, before exploding.
Moments later at a nearby traffic intersection, a suicide bomber triggered the explosives packed into his vehicle, creating a powerful blast. The hospital bombing occurred a short time later.
Yesterday’s attack was the deadliest to hit the country since Feb. 5, when 41 Shiite pilgrims were killed on the last day of a religious mourning ceremony on the outskirts of the holy city of Karbala.
Baqubah, about 60km north of Baghdad and capital of Diyala Province, was a hotbed of Sunni insurgents in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion.
Iraqis go to the polls on Sunday in legislative elections, the second such vote since dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003.
The country’s national security advisor said on Sunday that security forces had found and prevented at least 10 vehicle bombs in the past month as al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups sought to target the election.
Most of those bombs, which would have caused “very major damage,” would have struck in Baghdad, Safa Hussein said.
He added that of the groups seeking to strike in the election period, “AQI attacks are the most direct and serious security threat.”
“Al-Qaeda will try to target the whole process, but we do think that it doesn’t have the capacity to reach its goals,” Hussein said.
AQI leader Baghdadi earlier this month condemned the elections as a political crime plotted by Shiites, according to US-based SITE, which monitors Islamist Web sites.
“[We] have decided to prevent the elections by all legitimate means possible, primarily by military means,” SITE quoted him as saying in a statement posted on an Islamist website.
The election is seen by Washington as a crucial precursor to a complete US military withdrawal by the end of next year.
The UN’s envoy to Iraq has said that while he was concerned by the level of violence, it had not affected preparations for the election.
“We are concerned about the security of candidates and election organizers, but what one does not see is a general pattern that might really affect also the assessment of whether the campaign as such is enabling the Iraqi people really to express their preference,” Ad Melkert told reporters at a briefing in central Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.
A total of 352 Iraqis were killed as a result of violence in Iraq last month — 211 civilians, 96 police and 45 soldiers — which was nearly double the toll from the previous month.
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