BAGHDAD, 15 September 2005 — A spasm of retaliatory violence claimed by Al-Qaeda in Iraq ripped through Baghdad yesterday with more than 160 killed and 570 wounded in more than a dozen highly coordinated bombings that marked the bloodiest day in the Iraqi capital since the end of major combat.
The explosions began thundering across Baghdad shortly after dawn and continued into the late afternoon. Al-Qaeda said in a web posting that it launched the attacks, some less than 10 minutes apart, in response to a joint Iraqi-US operation that evicted insurgents from their northern stronghold of Tal Afar in an offensive that began Saturday.
The first attack yesterday was the deadliest, a suicide car bombing that tore through assembled day laborers in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in the north of the capital. Iraqi Health Ministry officials said at least 112 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded in the blast shortly after sunrise.
As the hours ticked by at least 11 other car or roadside bombs shattered what had been a few days of relative calm in Baghdad. Two mortar attacks were reported and a multitude of gunbattles broke between US and Iraqi forces and insurgent attackers.
In addition, 17 men were executed in a Sunni village north of Baghdad before dawn, raising the death toll in and around the capital yesterday to 169. At least six attacks targeted US forces, Iraqi authorities said. The US military said there were four direct attacks on Americans, with 10 soldiers wounded. No US deaths were reported.
Speaking before Al-Qaeda’s claim of responsibility, a senior American military official forecast the claim, telling The Associated Press he believed the rash of bombings was in retaliation for Tal Afar.
The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation yesterday, said the Tal Afar sweep had damaged the insurgency, which he said was made up of about 20 percent foreign fighters.
“Al-Qaeda in Iraq lost basically a base area and transit point coming across the Syrian border. That will severely inhibit their operations at least in the short term,” the officer said. The web posting by the terrorist group later in the day fulfilled the officer’s prediction.
“To the nation of Islam, we give you the good news that the battles of revenge for the Sunni people of Tal Afar began yesterday,” said the Al-Qaeda statement posted on a militant website. Its authenticity could not be confirmed. The blasts coincided with Iraqi lawmakers announcing the country’s draft constitution was in its final form and would be sent to the United Nations for printing and distribution ahead of an Oct. 15 national referendum. Sunni Muslims, who form up the core of the insurgency, have vowed to defeat the basic law.
Yesterday’s carnage was believed to have produced the second-worst one-day death toll since the US-led invasion in March 2003. A year later, on March 2, 2004, coordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives hit Kerbala and Baghdad, killing at least 181 and wounding 573.
The bomb that hit as laborers gathered in Kazimiyah was the single deadliest in the country since Feb. 28, when a suicide car bomber targeted Shiite police and National Guard recruits, killing 125 people in Hillah, 85 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad.
At Baghdad’s Kazimiyah Hospital, dozens of wounded men lay on stretchers and gurneys, their bandages and clothes soaked in blood. One older man in a traditional Arab gown and checkered head scarf sat in a plastic chair, his blood-soaked underwear exposed and a trail of dried blood snaking down his legs.
In Kazimiyah’s Oruba Square, twisted hulks of vehicles blocked the main street after the suicide attacker drove a small van into the midst of the assembling laborers.
Gunmen wearing military uniforms, meanwhile, surrounded a Sunni village 15 kilometers (10 miles) north of Baghdad overnight yesterday and executed 17 men, police said.
Taji police Lt. Waleed Al-Hayali said the gunmen had detained the victims after searching the village. The victims were handcuffed, blindfolded and shot. The dead included one policeman and others who worked as drivers and construction workers for the US military, said Al-Hayali.
The violence, however, was concentrated in and around the capital. Five soldiers were wounded in the worst attack on US forces who were hit by a car bomb shortly after 2 p.m. in central Baghdad.
An exchange of heavy machine gun fire rattled for about 10 minutes after that blast which injured 14 Iraqi police officers and sent columns of black smoke billowing over the city.
