BAGHDAD, 30 September 2005 — At least 85 people were killed and more than 110 wounded yesterday when three car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in the mainly Shiite central Iraqi town of Balad, police said.
Two pick-up trucks blew up in a central shopping street at 6.30 p.m. and 6:40 pm, with a third pick-up exploding in another neighborhood 10 minutes later, local police Lt. Col. Adel Abdallah said.
A fourth car bomb exploded an hour later in northern Baghdad, targeting an army patrol, although no casualties were immediately reported.
Five US solders were killed in a blast in a western town, the US military announced.
A doctor at Baghdad’s Khadimiyah Hospital said 40 ambulances were dispatched to Balad, but none had yet returned.
A suicide car bombing in Balad, some 70 km north of the capital, in June killed 10 Iraqis while another targeting Iraqi security forces in the town in January killed 19.
Dr. Khaled Al-Azawi of Balad Hospital said that among the wounded was the town’s police chief, Col. Kadhim Abdul Razzaq, and four other policemen.
The five US soldiers were killed a day earlier in Ramadi, a hotbed of insurgent activity 100 km west of Baghdad, a Marine statement said. They were conducting combat operations when a roadside bomb hit them — the deadliest single attack on US forces since a roadside bomb killed 14 Marines in the town of Haditha on Aug. 3.
Violence has escalated in the lead-up to a crucial Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution that has opened sharp divisions between the country’s Shiites and Sunnis. More than 140 people — including 13 US service members — have been killed in the past four days.
The Ramadi blast brought to 1,934 the number of US service members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The top American commander in Iraq told Congress yesterday that the process of withdrawing US troops from the country depends greatly on the results of the referendum and elections that are due to take place afterward if the constitution passes.
“The next 75 days are going to be critical for what happens,” Gen. George Casey told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Scattered shootings happened across Baghdad during the day — hitting a Shiite baker, a minibus carrying government workers, police vehicles — killing 12 people, including four police. A 12-year-old child living in a homeless shelter died when a mortar exploded nearby, police said.
North of Baghdad, three members of the Al-Khalis city council were killed by gunmen on their way home from a meeting, and an Iraqi woman was killed and three other civilians wounded when five mortar rounds hit them in Samara, police said.
In southern Iraq, British troops handed control of Camp Chindit Az-Zubayr, southwest of Basra, to the Iraqi Army, the Ministry of Defense said in London. About 100 British soldiers had been based at the camp, which was used for training Iraqi troops, and they have moved to bases elsewhere in southern Iraq, a ministry spokesman said, declining to be identified in keeping with government policy.
“We have not handed over Basra to the Iraqis,” the spokesman said. “This is not part of a withdrawal from Iraq. It is just part of a handover of responsibility for security to Iraqi forces, which had long been our intention.”
