IRAQ: Suicide car bombers killed at least 11 Iraqis and wounded 58 foreign troops yesterday in twin attacks on a military base south of Baghdad.
The attacks come in the run-up to a UN report on the feasibility of direct elections in Iraq.
A spokesman for Polish-led forces in Hilla, about 100km south of Baghdad, said 44 Iraqis were also wounded in the blasts. The wounds of the soldiers were not life-threatening.
Lieut-Col Robert Strzelecki said that guards outside the base managed to stop one of the cars by shooting at it but that a second car exploded after smashing into a wall.
"At 7:15 local time, near the logistics base, there was a terrorist attack using two cars," Lieut-Col Strzelecki said. US-led Coalition Provisional Authority spokeswoman Ms Hilary White later said: "We can confirm that more than 11 Iraqis were killed." She added that some of the dead were women and children.
The blasts blew the facing and roofs off of homes outside the base and, like car bombs last week that killed about 100 people as they enlisted in the Iraqi army and police, left survivors blaming Iraq's US occupiers for the bloodshed.
"We heard the sound of a plane overhead and a rocket landed and then a second rocket landed," said Omar Zayed (17), who lives near the site of the explosion.
Two young boys who were wounded in the explosion lost their parents. One of them, 10-year-old Seif Saleh, lay in a hospital bed complaining of pain and asking for his father as the coffins of his parents were brought into the hospital.
Relatives of one of the dead wept hysterically on the corridor floor and beat their hands on the wall.
The wounded foreign troops included at least 12 Filipinos, 10 Hungarians, 10 Poles and two Americans.These are the latest in a string of attacks against soldiers of countries helping the US occupy to Iraq.
The continuing violence that threatens US plans to formally hand sovereignty over to Iraqis by June 30th.
Those plans have been derailed by calls for elections before the formal transfer of sovereignty, rather than the series of caucuses Washington wanted.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expects to rule this week on the plan, having dispatched a team to Iraq to judge the feasibility of holding direct elections.