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Bodies wrapped in blankets waited to be identified after a suicide bombing in Tikrit, Iraq

May 11, 2005

At Least 79 Are Killed in New Round of Attacks in Iraq
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 11 - Insurgents struck in northern and central Iraq today in a series of bloody bombing attacks that killed at least 79 people in three cities, and wounded at least 120 others, according to figures provided by police and hospital officials. The attacks appeared to signify an intensification of attempts by Sunni Arab militants to disrupt Iraq's newly formed Shiite majority government.

In the deadliest single episode, at least 36 people were killed and 80 were wounded when a car bomber detonated his vehicle in the main street of Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, about 110 miles north of Baghdad. Survivors said the bomber, whom they took for an Iraqi, drove up to a point on the main street where casual workers from some of the poorest district in the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq had gathered looking for jobs and asked them to watch his car, which then exploded.

In the town of Hawija, near Kirkuk, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt slipped past security guards protecting a recruitment center for Iraq's new American-trained army and police and blew himself up, a police official said. At least 32 people were killed and 34 wounded, according to hospital officials.

Four other attacks were carried out in Baghdad, where the new government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite who heads an Iranian-backed religious party, is in its first week in office.

The government's swearing-in last Thursday was a watershed in Iraq's history, giving power to the Shiite majority after generations of rule by the Sunni Arab minority were ended with the toppling of Mr. Hussein in 2003.

American officials had hoped that the advent of an elected government, with a mandate from nearly nine millions Iraqis who voted in January elections, would persuade wavering elements in Sunni-led resistance to break with the insurgency and join in the American-sponsored effort to establish a parliamentary democracy. But those hopes have been rudely shattered by an eruption of violence that has carried the insurgency to levels rarely seen in the 25 months since American troops seized Baghdad.

The attacks today also included suicide bombings aimed at a police station in the southern Baghdad suburb of Doura, another suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol in the Yarmouk district of the capital, and an ambush of an Iraqi Army patrol in the Jamiyah district of western Baghdad, with at least nine killed and an unknown number of wounded. A mortar round also hit the Oil Ministry in Baghdad, but officials there said there were no casualties.

The latest attacks brought the number of Iraqi soldiers, police officers and recruits who have been killed in the new wave of attacks to more than 250. Still, American commanders say that volunteers for enlistment in the Iraqi forces continue to far outnumber the places available in training courses that are expected to push the Iraqi security forces, now numbering about 165,000, to about 300,000 by the end of next year.

At least 150 civilians have also been killed in the two weeks of bloodshed, bringing the toll to more than 400 killed, and making it one of the most violent passages in the 25 months of the war.

American officials have said the upsurge reflects a growing desperation among the insurgents as the country's transition to majority rule moves ahead. But American military commanders have also acknowledged that the insurgents, despite losing thousands of killed in the past year, have managed to increase the number of attacks across the country in May to an average of 70, up from 30 to 40 a day in April, a tempo higher than the insurgents managed for much of last year.

The attack in Tikrit today appeared to have been deliberately aimed at Shiites, a trend in the war that has suggested that some of the Sunni Arab insurgent groups seek to trigger a sectarian conflict between the Sunni minority and the Shiite majority.

Survivors of the car bombing said that about 6:30 a.m. a man driving a white car pulled to the curb at a spot on Tikrit's main street where Shiite migrant workers gather each day hoping for $5-a-day manual jobs, on farms and construction sites. He got out of his car and told them that he would return shortly to recruit some of them for work.

Ali Attiyah, a 23-year-old migrant who was taken to Tikrit's main hospital with leg wounds, said that the man spoke Arabic with an Iraqi accent. "He promised that he'd be back soon, but just after he walked away, the car exploded," Mr. Attiyah said.

A police officer who was across the road, outside the police headquarters for Saladin Province, gave a similar account. "I think he targeted them because most of them are Shiites who come here from the south," he said. "I believe he was trying to ignite a sectarian war."

The explosion left a scene that has become numbingly familiar to Iraqis: bodies strewn across the road, many of them dismembered, with pools of blood amid burning vehicles and shattered shopfronts. The al-Noor restaurant, a popular gathering place that is about 50 yards from the blast, was heavily damaged.

"There were dead and wounded people everywhere," a waiter, Khalil Salman, said. "We ran forward to try and help the wounded, but the policemen on the other side of the road fired in the air to drive us back."

Other witnesses said American troops based at a former palace of Mr. Hussein's only half a mile from the blast arrived quickly on the scene to restore order.

Although Tikrit is an overwhelmingly Sunni Arab city, and a stronghold of support for Mr. Hussein's ousted government, it has been a magnet for Shiite migrant workers for many years, drawn from cities like Kut, Diwaniya and Nasiriya in the south to seek jobs in what, in Mr. Hussein's heyday, was a center of palace-building and other construction projects that were part of the many favors bestowed on Tikritis by the city's favorite son.

Many of those killed today belonged to a rotating pool of casual workers who settle in worker's hostels in the city for a few weeks at a time, then travel hundreds of miles south to see their families before returning north again.

John F. Burns reported from Baghdad for this article and Khalid al-Ansary from Tikrit.

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