IRAQ:A double car bombing wrought carnage in Baghdad's commercial centre yesterday, killing at least 78 people and injuring more than 150 in an attack that highlighted the task facing president George Bush's US troop reinforcements as they prepare a new security strategy for the Iraqi capital.
Another attack, apparently aimed at Iraq's Shia community, killed at least 12 people and wounded nearly 30 shortly after dusk when a bomb exploded and mortars landed near a market in Khalis, a mainly Shia town 65km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.
The first Baghdad blasts occurred shortly after midday when a stationary car bomb ripped through market stalls in the Bab al-Sharji area on the east bank of the river Tigris. Moments later, a suicide car bomber drove into the crowd of onlookers. As plumes of smoke rose above the scene, the overstretched emergency services braced themselves for the influx of dead and wounded. State television showed pictures of a nearby hospital, where bodies had been placed in lines in the courtyard.
Police estimated that each car was packed with up to 100kg (220lbs) of explosives.
A police spokesman said: "Again it was just poor ordinary Iraqis shopping for clothes and cheap electrical goods, and the terrorists designed it so they would kill as many people as possible."
Last month, a suicide bomber killed at least 63 people in the Bab al-Sharji area. A week ago, 65 students were killed in twin car bombings at a university in eastern Baghdad.
Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is under pressure from Iraqis and the Bush administration to prevent such attacks and improve the security situation. "The violent terrorists who committed this crime have illusions that their bloody ideology to kill large number of civilians will break the will of the Iraqis and tear their unity and raise sectarianism," Mr Maliki said in a statement.
Politicians of all persuasions said the bombings were an attempt by Sunni terrorists to instill chaos ahead of the joint US-Iraqi security plan which is expected to kick in at the end of the month.
The first wave of an extra 17,000 US troops scheduled to deploy in Baghdad began arriving at the weekend. The US military said in a statement that the 3,200 fresh troops from the 82nd airborne division would "assist Iraqi security forces to clear, control and retain key areas of the capital city in order to reduce violence and to set the conditions for a transition to full Iraqi control of security in the city". They will be joined in the capital by up to three Iraqi army divisions from the Kurdish north.
Critics of the plan say the presence of extra troops could inflame the situation. Doubts also remain about the willingness of Mr Maliki to take the necessary steps to halt the anti-Sunni violence in the capital, blamed by many on the Mehdi army, which is loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.