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Suicide blasts kill 71 in Iraq

Edward Wong New York Times Apr. 8, 2006 12:00 AM

BAGHDAD - Three suicide bombers, including at least one woman, exploded in a sea of Friday worshipers at the main mosque of the most powerful Shiite political party in Iraq, killing at least 71 people and injuring at least 140.

Shiite and Sunni leaders called for restraint, fearful that the attack would unleash a wave of sectarian violence like the one that left hundreds dead after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in February.

The attack came as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. that, if a unified government is not formed soon, a sectarian war could erupt in Iraq and that such a war could engulf the entire Middle East.

Khalilzad again emphasized the need for Iraqi leaders to reach a compromise.

"There has been no agreement yet on the composition of the new government, and this has to happen as quickly as possible," he said.

"I think the patience of the Iraqi people as well as the patience of the international community is running out."

The explosions at the historic Baratha mosque in north Baghdad took place right after a prominent cleric, Sheik Jalaladin al-Sagheir, delivered a searing speech demanding that the incumbent prime minister step down.

The blasts scattered bodies across the courtyard, decimated stalls of vendors selling religious texts and ripped turquoise tile from the walls. The mosque loudspeaker blared a message urging people to donate blood, while police commandos piled charred bodies into pickup trucks. A white blanket covering one body was so soaked with blood that someone tossed a black cloth over it.

People sifted through pools of blood and filled wheelbarrows with shoes and body parts.

"I was inside, so I fell to the ground," Nadhum al-Bahadeli, a man whose white shirt was splattered with blood across one shoulder, said as he helped clear debris. "Other people were beneath me. When I stood up, I saw lots of dead people scattered across the courtyard, both men and women."

A guard showed a reporter a piece of scalp with long brown hair that he said came from the first bomber, a woman in black robes who had detonated her explosives at the outer gate. Panic erupted then, he said, and worshipers who had been trying to leave streamed back toward the main courtyard. Two other bombers slipped in during the chaos and detonated their explosives near the separate prayer areas for men and women, mosque and security officials said.

The well-guarded Baratha mosque is the main religious stronghold of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iranian-backed party that heads Parliament's major Shiite political bloc.

It was clear that the explosions went to the very heart of the Shiites' feeling that they are victims, as had scores of other attacks in the past three years of civil strife. On Thursday, a car bomb exploded just hundreds of yards from the golden-domed Imam Ali mosque in Najaf, killing at least 10 people in an apparent attempt to provoke a bloody cycle of reprisals.

"The Shia are being targeted in this dirty sectarian war," Sagheir said in a telephone interview with the Al Arabiya network. "The world is watching as if what is happening means nothing."

The sheik said there were reports that one of the bombers had been trying to make his way to the cleric's office before detonating himself.

In his Friday prayer speech, the white-turbaned sheik had called for the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to withdraw his bid to hold on to his job in the next government.

"There are rules in the political game, and he who can't read them will lose," Sagheir said.

Last Sunday, the sheik said in a telephone interview that Jaafari should abdicate to break the deadlock in forming a new government, a demand that fractured the Shiite bloc, which dominates the parliament.

Sagheir's party, the Supreme Council, is offering one of its deputies, Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, as the new nominee for prime minister. Abdul Mahdi lost to Jaafari by one vote in a secret ballot in February among the 130 members of the Shiite bloc. Jaafari has the backing of Muqtada al-Sadr, a rebellious cleric who despises the Supreme Council.

Both Sadr and the Supreme Council have formidable militias that have clashed in open street battles.

But the mosque attack appeared to be the work of jihadists aligned with the Sunni-led insurgency rather than violence between Shiites.