Angry crowds hurl stones at Iraqi soldiers
Iraqi policemen carry the coffin of Brig. Gen. Ahmed Abdullah before his burial in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday. Abdullah was killed when six gunmen in two cars blocked his vehicle and shot him dead, police said.
BAGHDAD – Anger boiled over in Baghdad streets at Iraqi soldiers and police after they failed to prevent a stunning series of coordinated bombings across the city Monday that left 37 dead and more than 100 wounded.
Iraq’s government blamed the attacks on supporters of Saddam Hussein “in cooperation with the al-Qaida terrorist organization” and suggested the blasts were timed for Tuesday’s anniversary of the founding of the late dictator’s Baath party.
The attacks, which one Interior Ministry official called the worst breach of security in Baghdad this year, occurred as the U.S. military is drawing down its forces in the capital. Some Iraqis pondered whether their own soldiers and police can maintain order if Shiite-Sunni violence flares again once the Americans have gone.
At the site of one blast, in the former militia stronghold of Sadr City, angry crowds hurled stones at Iraqi soldiers in a display of bitterness that they failed to prevent a car bomb from entering a busy market, where it exploded.
“They are just sitting at the checkpoint doing nothing and after that they open fire randomly,” said Mohammed Latif, a government employee who lives in Sadr City, about the Iraqi soldiers.
According to police, none of the six blasts claimed more than 12 lives, far fewer than the 30 people who died in a March 8 suicide attack at Baghdad’s police academy and the 33 killed in a suicide bombing two days later at a market.
But the attacks Monday were stunning in their scope, striking widely dispersed targets from the northeast to the southwest of this sprawling city over a four-hour period.
That cast doubt on U.S. and Iraqi claims that militants were no longer capable of the sort of mass attacks that shook Baghdad in 2006 and 2007.
No group claimed responsibility for the bombings.